


A Year in the Life

by Lys ap Adin (lysapadin)



Series: Choice: Betrothal [11]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Skeevy Sexual Politics, Suicidal Thoughts, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:25:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 67,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lysapadin/pseuds/Lys%20ap%20Adin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tsunako gathers up a Family of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Yamamoto

**Author's Note:**

> And here we kick off the grand re-imagining of the Daily Life arc of the manga, with all that entails. Suicidal ideation, genderswap, and the mafia.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsunako gives Yamamoto a place to stand.

"You seem like you're in a good mood lately," Tousan noted over dinner one night as Takeshi told him about his day.

Takeshi thought about it, because Tousan didn't tend to make observations like that without cause. "Huh," he said, finally. "Maybe?" He guessed he _was_ in a pretty good mood lately, but maybe he had reason to be—Tomita-buchou was going to have him starting in their next game, and ever since he'd started playing the mafia game with Sawada-chan and Gokudera-kun, she'd stopped spending so much of her time looking sad. So that was plenty of cause for a good mood, wasn't it? "Things have been good lately."

"But not too good," Tousan said, superstitious that way, just in case the universe decided to take notice and even things out again.

Takeshi laughed. "But not too good," he repeated obediently, grinning at the idea that the universe could care so much about what one middle-school student had to say about his own life.

But then again, he thought a couple of days later, holding his arm and sitting in the middle of his teammates' fussing, bewildered by the inexplicable betrayal of muscle and tendon and bone, then again, Tousan was really smart sometimes—it was good to be careful, to be modest, to try avoiding drawing too much attention to oneself. Too bad he hadn't taken Tousan's little superstitions seriously enough.

The trip to the hospital, the doctors, and the x-rays all went by in a blur, too loud and too bright for him to pay attention to or focus on. He remembered that Tousan was there, talking with the doctor, and he remembered Narita-sensei, looking more irritated than anything else, and Tomita-buchou talking on the other side of the curtain that partitioned off the bed where Takeshi sat. Tomita-buchou was already talking with Narita-sensei about which teammate they could rotate into Takeshi's spot in the lineup, and it was then that Takeshi stopped listening to anything that was going on around him in self-defense.

Even so, one thing penetrated, and that was the doctor shaking his head and talking about the eight weeks it would take for his arm to heal, plus the months of physical therapy after that to regain full range of motion. Takeshi waited for him to laugh and say that it was a joke, but he didn't.

Takeshi was quiet when Tousan took him home. Tousan let him be, let him skip dinner and go straight up to bed, where Takeshi lay down with his head fuzzy from the pills the doctors had given him before they'd set his arm. The break in it still ached, but it was in a distant sort of way. Takeshi did his best not to think, then, so successfully that eventually he fell asleep still dressed in his gym clothes, which were a real pain to deal with (hah, a pain, hahah) the next morning when Tousan woke him for school and made him late for school.

Not-thinking had worked for him while he was at home, but it didn't work so well at school, because everyone looked at him there, but not the way he was used to. They were looking at him like they felt sorry for him, like they were disappointed that Namimori was going to have to rely on Nagai-kun in his stead. Nagai-kun was a great guy and all, but he wasn't Takeshi and everyone knew it. Once or twice Takeshi heard someone say, "What a waste," and that made his gut clench because it wasn't like he was _dead_ yet. His arm was broken, but it was going to heal and be as good as new. The doctors said so, and they wouldn't lie about something like that.

Takeshi did his best to concentrate on that and the day's lessons, but focus eluded him. Everything was all tangled up in the painkillers that didn't really kill his pain so much as wrap his brain up in a fuzzy haze that made it hard to focus on the teachers' lessons or his classmates or taking notes.

Not, he thought vaguely, that there was going to be much worth caring about if he didn't have baseball.

It was funny, or should have been funny, how everyone treated him like he was already over, like he was already washed-up and done at the ripe old age of thirteen. Like he really was already dead. For pity's sake. It made him want to do something, he didn't even know what, yell or scream or something, but instead he took his painkillers at lunch time and then drifted upstairs toward the roof, leaving his bento still sitting inside his desk. He had the ill-formed thought that it would be quieter up there, with fewer people to stare at him and look sorry that their pet baseball star had ruined his arm.

Great, he couldn't even escape the voices in his head. Takeshi made a face and ambled over to the sunny eastern wall of the roof, where he could look at the sports fields. That was where the guys from the team would be eating lunch, wolfing it down before hitting the field for some practice. Nagai-kun was probably down there right now, enjoying his good luck.

The chain link fence that ran around the perimeter of the roof creaked under Takeshi's fingers; he blinked at it, a little surprised by its protest. But the fence was old and kind of rusty, pretty flimsy now that he was looking at it. And this was supposed to keep accidents from happening? Geez. Like that could stop anyone who was feeling determined. Heck, even a guy with a bad arm could probably get around a rusty old fence like this one. All he'd have to do is put a foot here, and grasp there, and—

"There you are."

Takeshi blinked at his hand gripping the fence in front of him, coming back from that strangely abstracted place inside his head, and loosened his grip. When he had eased his foot free of the fence and turned around, he saw that it was Sawada-chan who'd hailed him. "Oh," he said. "Sawada-chan."

She was looking at him—no, she was looking at him and the fence both, and something was moving across her face. Which was kind of strange, really, because she was usually pretty good at hiding what she was thinking, just like he was. It was one of the reasons he'd always felt a sort of strange kinship with her. She was on the outside, too, in her own way. "So this is where you've been," she said, after a moment. Her voice was strange. Tight. "Reborn says you're being a bad bodyguard. You forgot to stop by this morning. I had to walk to school by myself, except for Reborn."

Oh. The mafia game. Right. He'd forgotten about that. About promising to make up for Gokudera's trip out of town. About—a lot of things. Takeshi cleared his throat. "Don't think you need a bodyguard with a bad arm," he said, trying for something like a joke, something like his normal self.

He didn't think it had worked; Sawada-chan looked at him, looked past him, and frowned. "That's not—that's not the point." Her voice was still funny, too tight and high.

She understood, Takeshi thought, even though he was a little fuzzy in his own head about what it was that she understood, exactly. But she knew why he was here. He could tell, looking at her eyes.

Sawada-chan had spent a lot of time on the roof, too, he remembered suddenly, and wondered whether she'd ever noticed how pathetic the safety fence really was.

Something seemed to occur to her after a moment, and she took a breath. "You're supposed to be my bodyguard." Maybe she was trying to sound light-hearted, but her voice shook just a bit. "You swore to it, remember? Your life for mine." She folded her arms across her chest, pulling herself up and frowning, and despite the uncertainty in her voice and the joking, there was something there, something in her that pulled Takeshi's spine straight in response. "Don't you think it's a little early for you to be slacking off?"

"My arm—" Takeshi began, even though something was already easing inside of him, because there was still a place for him, something he could still do. Someone who still needed him.

"Is going to be fine, right? Soon as it heals. That's no excuse for being lazy." Sawada-chan frowned harder. "Or did you not mean your oath? I don't think it's a good idea to go making oaths if you don't actually mean them. I'm pretty sure I could have you shot for that."

"No. No, I… meant it. Sorry." Takeshi came away from the safety fence, breathing easy for the first time in twenty-four hours. "I got distracted."

"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do _that_ , either," she said, almost breathless, like she'd been running hard. Or was relieved. Takeshi smiled for real for the first time since yesterday afternoon, because he'd always suspected that Sawada-chan could get sarcastic when she was pushed to it. It was nice to see that he'd been right.

"Sorry," he said. "I won't do it again."

Sawada-chan gave him a long look. "Make sure you don't," she said. She gestured at a sunny spot over by the stairwell, away from the edges of the roof. "I'm hungry. You?"

He wasn't, really, though he was supposed to have eaten something with his meds. Whatever. "I'll just keep watch," he said, falling in with her as she headed over to sit down.

"That works, too," she said, unfolding her bento.

Which, yeah, Takeshi thought, it kind of did.

Later that evening, well after he'd seen Sawada-chan home, Reborn surprised him by dropping in via the window of his bedroom. "So," he said, standing right in the middle of Takeshi's homework while Takeshi blinked at him. "You've decided to be Tsunako's bodyguard."

The way he said it sounded serious. Takeshi straightened up like he did when Tousan had decided that it was time for a life lesson. "Yeah, I guess I have."

Reborn gave him a long look, like he was measuring him against something and trying to decide whether he was going to come up to standard. Takeshi supposed he must have, because Reborn nodded, the gesture strangely curt in someone who looked like an infant. "There are things you should know, then," he announced. "For one, she's not going to marry you."

What? Oh. Takeshi reached up with his good hand and rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Ah. That was kind of a joke, actually. I'm not—Sawada-chan really isn't my type, you see." Really, really not his type. Maybe if she'd been a boy. Well, maybe.

Reborn didn't seem particularly moved by that. "Make sure she continues not to be your type. She's promised to someone else. Joking about marrying her will get you shot."

Not, Takeshi thought, a joke. Not like it had been when Sawada-chan had said it. Well. Okay. It really wasn't a problem, so he put it to the side. "All right."

Reborn eyed him, then smirked. "Good. You're going to need to be able to fight," he said. He produced a baseball bat through some kind of magic that was frankly far more interesting than either the bat itself or the thing he'd said about fighting. He ignored the question when Takeshi asked him how he'd done that. "Tell me, have you ever thought about the sword?"

Takeshi guessed that idle speculation about Tousan's kendo hobby didn't really count, so he shrugged his good shoulder. "Not really." He glanced at the bat and then at Reborn. "Not that it matters, right? Broken arm, remember?" It almost didn't hurt to say it.

"Never mind that." Reborn pinned a look on him, piercing. "If it came down to her life or yours, would you fight for hers?"

It was a stupid question, but Takeshi guessed that Reborn must not have been around to see Sawada-chan talk him back from the edge by giving him a place to stand and belong. How would he know? "Yes," he said. "I would."

"Then you'll need this." Reborn rolled the baseball bat across the desk. "As to the other…" The pacifier resting against his chest began to glow, yellow as the sun in a child's drawing. "It won't do her much good if you're injured, I suppose."

"You're not really a kid at all, are you?" Takeshi said, fascinated by this new mystery. Reborn smirked at him. "What are you?"

"That has no bearing on this," Reborn told him, reaching out and laying a hand on Takeshi's sling. "Hold still, this is going to hurt."

And he wasn't lying; whatever it was that the glowing pacifier and hand he'd laid on Takeshi were doing hurt like crazy. Takeshi gritted his teeth and did his best to breathe through it as bone ground against bone, the fierce ache of it throbbing in time to his heartbeat and the sweat beading on his forehead, until Reborn took his hand away and it eased. "That should help," Reborn said. He fixed a frown on Takeshi. "If you blow off your duties again, I will shoot you."

He hopped out the window while Takeshi as still clutching his arm and breathing through his teeth, and was gone before the last thing he'd said had even begun to sink in.

Takeshi, hunched over and breathing hard, stared at the bat Reborn had left behind. Then, even though there was no one around to see it, he began to smile.


	2. Kyouko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsunako gives Kyouko a purpose.

It had been just about a month since Sakura and Yuuko had transferred schools and Tsunako-chan had taken up with Yamamoto-kun and Gokudera-kun, and Kyouko had to say that she really did approve of the changes that had come over Tsunako-chan in that period. She'd always been self-effacing and quiet (in the not-good way) before, but now she seemed to be doing a lot more talking. Well, something like talking, anyway. One sometimes did have to speak up a bit in order to be heard over Gokudera-kun.

The one problem, if it was a problem, was that Tsunako-chan went around so much with Yamamoto-kun and Gokudera-kun these days that it was next to impossible to get a word with her privately, which was something Kyouko dearly wanted to do. The boys clung to Tsunako-chan's side like glue. (It was a good thing that Sakura and Yuuko had transferred, otherwise there would have been no way of stemming their malice short of outright war, which was something Kyouko preferred to avoid.) After the first couple attempts to get Tsunako-chan alone for an afternoon of cake and girl-talk ended with the boys tagging along willy-nilly to eat truly _astonishing_ amounts of cake and then lounge around grinning (Yamamoto-kun) or picking one-sided arguments (Gokudera-kun), Kyouko realized that sterner efforts were going to be in order.

She brought the matter up at lunch, since she'd taken to eating with Tsunako-chan more days than not. (She looked so baffled by the boys sometimes that Kyouko couldn't help wanting to relieve her, just a bit, and it was really fairly entertaining to watch the way Yamamoto-kun had of deliberately winding Gokudera-kun up.) "So," she said, using her brightest tones, "about going out for cake tomorrow afternoon."

Tsunako-chan's expressions gave away an awful lot of what she was thinking. This time she looked wary, like she was already bracing herself for disappointment. That was one of the things Kyouko really wanted to talk with her about, because she gave things away too easily to anyone who had the sense to be paying attention. "What about it?"

"Well, I _want_ to go back to Greatest Cake, _but_." Kyouko stopped and gave the boys a severe look, one of the ones she'd learned from Kaasan and that even managed to make her brother shut up (sometimes). It worked fairly well: Yamamoto-kun straightened up and gave her a sweetly innocent smile, like he hadn't just been trying to steal Gokudera-kun's anpan, and Gokudera-kun stopped growling quite so loudly. "I don't want to get thrown out." She smiled at the boys as pointedly as she could. "You two can find something else to entertain yourselves with tomorrow afternoon, can't you? So we can have an afternoon of girl talk without worrying about making Fujiwara-san angry enough to tell us not to come back?"

A point-blank request like that one ought to have worked perfectly; she rarely ever had to use them and so people tended to be obliging enough about giving in out of surprise. Kyouko really hadn't expected Gokudera-kun to begin shaking his head right away. "We can't. We go where Sawada-san goes."

Sawada- _san_ was one of the things Kyouko particularly wanted to unravel. "Are you _sure_?" Kyouko smiled at Gokudera-kun, coaxing. "Just one little afternoon to ourselves?"

He turned red, which was the appropriate response, and shook his head, which was not. "We have to stick close to Sawada-san. It's our job." Though his mouth twisted on _our_ and he gave Yamamoto-kun a glare. When Kyouko checked on Tsunako-chan to see what her reaction to this was, she seemed mostly resigned to that declaration, though perhaps just a bit wistful for an afternoon free of the boys (not that Kyouko could blame her for that at all).

"Not even one teeny-tiny afternoon?" she wheedled, fully aware that Yamamoto-kun was laughing at her behind his bento—well, let him laugh. This was a challenge now. "Just so Tsunako-chan and I can have a proper chance to catch up?" She gave Gokudera-kun her sweetest smile, the one that was earnestly vapid and which never failed her.

He went red to the roots of his hair. Kyouko suspected him of wavering and shifted her posture to give him a chance to be good and distracted by what that did to the hemline of her skirt.

And then Yamamoto-kun, drat the boy, said, tone mild, " _Do_ bodyguards ever get the day off in this game? I was wondering about that, actually."

Oh, it sounded like he was chipping in on her side, but Kyouko knew better than that, because it reminded Gokudera-kun of what she was proposing. He rounded on Yamamoto-kun, yelling about how it wasn't a game at all and insulting Yamamoto-kun's lack of intelligence, which said a lot right there about how unobservant Gokudera-kun really was. Kyouko frowned at Yamamoto-kun, who just laughed at them both.

Also, bodyguards?

Tsunako-chan leaned over to speak to her under the hubbub of the boys' wrangling. "I'm sorry. They're probably not going to let themselves be distracted, though. They're both pretty determined."

Which, yes, Kyouko had noticed and wanted to know more about. "They can't go _everywhere_ with you," she protested. "That's too much."

Tsunako-chan probably didn't know how weary she looked when she shrugged like that. "Can't be helped." She capped it off with a little sigh.

"Don't be so stupid."

Kyouko blinked, surprised, when a tiny person dropped out of the sky—no, down from the fence above them—to stand in the middle of their little cluster. It—he—was wearing a black suit and a frown, which he aimed at Tsunako-chan. "Are they _your_ bodyguards or not?"

"Reborn." Kyouko couldn't tell whether Tsunako-chan was saying it like a name or a curse. "You said that I couldn't go anywhere without a bodyguard."

He rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed, and Kyouko watched this byplay, fascinated by this tiny person (whom the other three all seemed to take in stride). "So use your brain. Are these idiots the only bodyguards you have?"

Tsunako-chan made an uncertain sound. "Can I—can I _do_ that?"

"Try it and find out." Reborn turned then and gave Kyouko a slow once-over. His mouth pursed. "I want the Poison Scorpion to get a measure of that one, anyway."

Gokudera-kun made a gagging sound and turned green, looking like he was about to vomit. Reborn disappeared in the fuss over that; by the time they'd established that Gokudera-kun absolutely refused to go to the infirmary, Reborn was long gone, lunch was nearly over, and Kyouko hadn't gotten the chance to ask what any of that had meant.

Nor did she get a chance again that day or all during the next. By time time the school-day had ended and Yamamoto-kun was escorting her and Tsunako-chan to the school's gate, Kyouko was burning with curiosity. There was a woman waiting there; Tsunako-chan smiled to see her, bright like the sun. "Bianchi-san!" She said it like she hadn't quite expected to see her.

"Hey, kiddo." The woman smiled, flicking her long hair back with a practiced gesture, and glanced past Yamamoto-kun and Kyouko like she was expecting to see someone else. (Gokudera-kun, maybe? But he hadn't joined the exodus for the school gates, for some reason.) "Ready to go?"

"I think so… oh!" Tsunako-chan looked back and forth between them, nibbling her lip. "Bianchi-san, this is Sasagawa Kyouko. Kyouko-chan, this is Bianchi-san."

Interesting that Tsunako-chan was so anxious about the two of them meeting, and interesting that Yamamoto-kun either didn't rate an introduction or was already acquainted with Bianchi-san. Kyouko filed that away for consideration and gave Bianchi-san a polite bow as she assessed the woman's practical clothes and sturdy boots and the way her eyes kept moving all the time, the same way Gokudera-kun's did. "I'm pleased to meet you!"

Bianchi-san smiled at her, friendly without promising anything. "Likewise. I've heard a lot about you."

That was also interesting, because she hadn't heard anything about Bianchi-san at all. Tsunako-chan flushed, but before she could do much more than that, Yamamoto-kun grinned. "Well, guess that means I'm off-duty. Make sure you eat some cake for me, huh?" He gave them all another of his impartially amiable smiles and sauntered off, leaving the three of them alone.

Bianchi-san waited until Yamamoto-kun was out of earshot before smiling at them both and saying, "Tell me more about this matter of cake."

Tsunako-chan fidgeted with the folds of her skirt and peered at Bianchi-san. "It's nothing fancy, just a place nearby that sells cake—you don't mind, do you?"

"Who could mind cake?" Bianchi-san reached over and ruffled Tsunako-chan's hair, her smile fond. "Don't be ridiculous, I've been looking forward to this all day."

This was getting more and more interesting by the minute, Kyouko decided, watching the way Tsunako-chan smiled at Bianchi-san, shy and pleased. "I think that if we hurry, we might be able to beat the rush," she said, which served well enough to get them all moving. Bianchi-san took a position at Tsunako-chan's shoulder, just like Yamamoto-kun and Gokudera-kun had taken to doing. Hm. Perhaps it was time to begin. "So, you must also be one of Tsunako-chan's bodyguards."

Tsunako-chan squeaked quietly, but Bianchi-san simply raised her eyebrows as she glanced Kyouko's way. "Among other things, yes."

"I thought so," Kyouko said, satisfied on that point, though it raised so many other questions that she scarcely knew which to tackle first. Well. Kaasan always said that politeness was more reliable than anything else. "Have you been in Namimori for very long?"

"A few weeks, that's all." Bianchi-san smiled like she was amused, though she was keeping a sharp eye on their surroundings as they walked. She eyed the traffic in the street and the people they passed, and Kyouko would have been willing to bet that she didn't miss any of the small details, either.

A few weeks was about the same amount of time since Tsunako-chan's behavior had begun to change. Kyouko made note of that and forged on. "Oh! Then you probably won't have had time to get to know Greatest Cake yet. You're in for a treat."

"So Tsunako-chan has been telling me." Bianchi-san glanced at her charge, who was watching them both like she didn't quite understand what was going on. No, that couldn't quite be the case; Kyouko suspected that Tsunako-chan was perfectly aware of the social games people played around her, even if she didn't quite trust herself enough to participate in them. A shame, that, when the first rule of the game was never to permit the other players to suspect one's uncertainty. "I hear they serve coffee. Is it any good?"

If Kyouko wasn't mistaken, that was real longing in Bianchi-san's voice. "They do!" She smiled, showing her ruefulness. "I don't know how good it is. I don't have a taste for it—I'm partial to tea."

"You and everyone else in this country," Bianchi-san grumbled.

Kyouko didn't think that was an accidental slip. "Where did you live before you came to Namimori?" Live, yes. That was a better choice than _work_ , which assumed too much.

"Italy," Bianchi said as they came to the crosswalk and waited for the light to change.

That diverted Kyouko from her quest for more information. "Oh, Italy!" she said, delighted. "Really? I've always wanted to go there—is it really as beautiful as the pictures make it look?"

"Even more beautiful," Bianchi-san assured her as the light changed and they crossed the street. The shopping district opened up ahead of them, the sidewalks already beginning to fill up with the after-school crowd of teenagers, mostly female, who liked to haunt the little boutiques and arcades and cafés that lined the streets. "The pictures don't do it justice."

"I hope you'll tell me all about it," Kyouko told her. "Maybe once we get settled?" The striped awning of Greatest Cake shadowed the sidewalk just ahead of them. It looked like they were just in time to get in ahead of the worst of the afternoon crowds, which was gratifying—Kyouko supposed that being this close to the shopping district hadn't been the _main_ reason she'd decided on Namimori Chuu, but it certainly hadn't hurt, either.

Bianchi-san's smile had something like real warmth behind it. "I thought you and Tsunako wanted to have a little girl time to yourselves. I thought I'd let you get on with that and stay out of your way."

An interesting parry, that. So was the way Tsunako-chan looked like she didn't know whether to be pleased or not. "Don't be silly," Kyouko said, revising her strategies to work around that. "You won't be in the way at all—will she, Tsunako-chan?"

She looked surprised to be consulted, which was one of the other things Kyouko was going to have to talk with her about—it was fine to let people think they could decide everything for you, but another thing entirely to actually let them get away with doing it. "I—no, of course not, you should sit with us, Bianchi-san."

Yes, that was good—Tsunako-chan was smiling and Bianchi-san was looking thoughtful. Kyouko smiled too as they turned in at the bakery, willing enough to surrender the chance to get Tsunako-chan alone for the sake of pumping Bianchi-san for more information.

Greatest Cake had one long case filled with dainty pastries carefully arranged on lacy paper doilies; half the joy of visiting the place was in perusing the rows of cakes and tarts and tortes and cupcakes and dithering over which one to selected. At least, that was Kyouko's opinion. Bianchi-san took a look at the espresso machine that sat behind the counter and made a tiny, hopeful sound, and then another, more worshipful, one as she watched one of the people waiting on customers work it to produce a cappuccino.

That was a side-effect to their visit that she hadn't expected, and a good one, too. Kyouko beamed at the rows of sweets and picked a slice of the strawberry-lemon cake for herself. Tsunako-chan chose a cupcake, and Bianchi-san took a careless glance at the case and picked out one of the narrow slices of dark chocolate torte—and a double shot of espresso. Not that a person could learn everything there was to know about someone by their choice of dessert, of course, but as Tousan sometimes observed, it was the details that counted.

Bianchi-san also steered them to one of the indoor tables, in the corner away from the door, when Kyouko would have headed outdoors for one of the tables shaded by striped umbrellas. Bianchi-san claimed the seat in the corner and made Tsunako-chan sit next to her, which left Kyouko with the choice of taking the seat with its back to the room or the seat on Bianchi-san's free side. Kyouko pondered that piece of maneuvering, watching Bianchi-san observing her, and selected the seat on Bianchi-san's left hand. "So, Italy!" She smiled across the table at Tsunako-chan. "Didn't you come to Namimori from Italy, too?"

Tsunako-chan stopped in the act of unwrapping the paper from her cupcake, her eyes wide. "I—yes—how did you—?"

"I thought I remembered you saying something like that when the teacher had you introduce yourself." Kyouko smiled at them both and took a bite of her cake, and hummed around the creamy lemon flavor of the icing and the sweetness of the cake. "Oh, this is _really_ good." So, Italy, where Bianchi-san had worked and maybe was from, given her name, and where Tsunako-chan was from, and also Gokudera-kun, come to think of it. That was far too many coincidences for such a small cluster of peculiar people. "How's your coffee, Bianchi-san?"

"Like a little cup of heaven," she sighed, mouth curved over the rim of the demitasse like a woman in rapture—unless a person happened to catch a glance of her eyes, which were perfectly alert.

Tsunako-chan, meanwhile, was still staring across the table at Kyouko. "You—but—that was years ago!"

Kyouko blinked at her. "It was interesting, and a little strange. I guess it stuck with me." Or rather, she'd filed it away like she did most things, because _people_ were interesting and one never knew what might be worth knowing someday. "What kind of cupcake did you get this time?"

"Nothing fancy." Tsunako-chan went back to unwrapping it, though she still looked a bit dazed, like she hadn't thought anyone could pay that much attention to her. "Vanilla with fudge frosting."

"Mm, trade you a bite of mine for a bite of yours," Kyouko offered, glancing at Bianchi-san to show that she was included in that.

The exchange of plates and bites of cake and compliments over one another's choices eased Tsunako-chan's flusterment and changed the topic fairly gracefully, which was fine. These things had a certain rhythm to them, and Kyouko was content to chatter about some of the other bakeries in the area and then to listen to Bianchi-san's story about the time she'd spent a few months living above a patisserie in Florence, and how glad she'd been to move away from all those distracting smells. Kyouko filed that away, too, because it sounded like Bianchi-san moved around a lot—for work, maybe? And now she was here, calling herself a bodyguard-among-other-things for Tsunako-chan.

Kyouko didn't have any experience with bodyguards as such, but Bianchi-san kept a close eye on the comings and goings of the other customers as they talked and ate, and Kyouko was fairly sure that she only _looked_ relaxed. It lent a certain credence to the bodyguard claim.

She put all that together and waited for a lull in the conversation, which finally came as they finished the last bites of their desserts. Kyouko waited a moment as they pushed their plates back and sighed before she dabbed her lips with her napkin and smiled across the table at Tsunako-chan. "So! I've been wondering. Why _do_ you need a bodyguard, Tsunako-chan?"

Tsunako-chan squeaked and stared at her with such a look of dismay that Kyouko couldn't find it in herself to be amused by it. "I—but—what?"

"I've been wondering since yesterday." Kyouko folded her napkin and laid it next to her plate. "There just didn't seem to be a good time to ask until just now."

Tsunako-chan continued to stare at her like she was at a complete loss, but Bianchi-san snorted softly, her mouth crooked like she was amused. She set the demitasse down, the click of porcelain against porcelain soft, and gave Kyouko a very direct sort of look. "Do you understand that if we answer that question, you won't be able to go back to how things were before?"

Ah, so what Tsunako-chan had gotten involved in was something big and complicated and probably dangerous (a given, that, since there were bodyguards). Kyouko weighed those risks against her curiosity and the fact that she genuinely did like Tsunako-chan, especially the Tsunako-chan who forgot to be shy and uncertain of herself and showed the things that lay behind her diffidence.

It was hardly a choice at all.

Kyouko smiled at Bianchi-san and made sure to include Tsunako-chan in it. "I assume it has something to do with Italy somehow, since that seems to be the common thread… unless perhaps you're a part of Tsunako-chan's family?"

That startled Bianchi-san somehow; Kyouko saw it in the way her eyes widened. Then she laughed, rich and warm, and said, "I suppose you could say I'm here on business for her Family, yes."

"Bianchi-san." Tsunako-chan's voice was very soft; she'd stopped sputtering and she looked as serious as Kyouko had ever seen her. Kyouko sat up straighter and gave Tsunako-chan her undivided attention, since whatever was going on was serious enough to get Tsunako-chan to show some of those hidden depths of hers. Bianchi-san went quiet, too, though that wasn't something she had time to analyze just then, because Tsunako-chan's hands were on the table in front of her, curling and uncurling. She looked across the table, meeting Kyouko's eyes. "I know you heard Yamamoto call it a game yesterday, but it's not, it's really, really not, so you… it would be better if you didn't have to be involved."

Kyouko absorbed that, trying to untangle all the things Tsunako-chan was—and was not—saying. Better for whom, precisely? She leaned back in her chair as Tsunako-chan continued to fidget. Bianchi-san was watching them both, her expression wiped clean and neutral—so there were no hints to be found there.

It was too bad she hadn't ordered a drink to go with her cake. It would have been good to have something to do with her hands just now, some careless gesture that would buy her a little time to think while undercutting the deadlock of the moment. That had been a careless oversight on her part; she'd have to be sure not to forget that again.

In lieu of that, she leaned forward again, rested her elbows on the table, and folded her hands under her chin. Maybe it was best to be direct, since Tsunako-chan wasn't very practiced with people and had been spending a lot of time with the boys lately. (They were both lovely people, but were very rough around the edges.) "Do you not want to be friends?" Tsunako-chan's eyes went wide and her jaw dropped, which was good—now she knew she had _Tsunako-chan's_ undivided attention. "We _are_ at the place where we should make that decision, I suppose. Neither of us is so invested that we can't recover from it if we decide not to, so maybe it's best that we go ahead and figure this out now."

Kyouko paused then to give Tsunako-chan a chance to recover from her shock and decide how she wanted to respond. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Bianchi-san's eyebrows had lifted infinitesimally and wondered how she was doing in Bianchi-san's assessment.

Well, she might find out eventually.

"Not… not want to be friends?" Tsunako-chan sounded bewildered, and looked it, too, and a little hurt around the eyes. "Why did you—how did you get that idea?"

Oh, dear. She was going to have to be even more direct and plain-spoken than that, wasn't she? Kyouko gentled her tone as much as she could. "It's like this." She smiled at Tsunako-chan. "I like you and I think you're interesting to spend time with, and I think we could become very good friends. On the other hand, you're involved in something that you don't want to tell me about, even though it seems to be fairly big and complicated and the kind of thing that takes over a person's life." That much had already begun to happen—just look at the way Yamamoto-kun and Gokudera-kun shadowed Tsunako-chan at school, and the way she couldn't even spend an afternoon at a bakery eating cake with a friend without a bodyguard. "You don't _have_ to tell me about whatever it is, because it's _your_ secret, but if you don't, we're probably not going to be able to become much closer than we are now. That's not because I'm trying to manipulate you, though it probably sounds like I'm saying, 'Tell me what's going on or I'm going to stop liking you forever!' I'm not, really. It's just that if I don't know what's going on, I won't be able to understand the reasons you'll start changing, and eventually we'll stop having things in common. Ultimately, we won't know how to really talk to each other at all, and we'll drift apart."

Drat it, she really needed a drink or something to do with herself so that Tsunako-chan could have a moment to really think all that through, because she looked rather stunned by all of that. People generally did whenever Kyouko tried to explain how things worked to them, if they didn't say she was weird for analyzing how people worked the way she did. (Personally, she thought it was strange that most people _didn't_ think about such things.)

She unfolded her hands and stretched out her shoulders and then ran her fingers through her hair while Tsunako-chan stared at her, waiting until she stopped looking astonished and had begun to look like she was thinking. Kyouko gave her another moment to do that and smiled at her again. "I'd really regret that," she said. "Like I said, I like you. You're interesting and you seem to be collecting interesting people." She didn't—quite—look at Bianchi-san, but Yamamoto-kun was one of the other most interesting people in their class, and Gokudera-kun looked to be the same way, and then there was the matter of that tiny Reborn person. The point made itself. "You're getting involved in something that requires you to have bodyguards, so whatever it is must be dangerous. I'm willing to entertain that risk, in case you're wondering about that and it's bothering you."

Tsunako-chan was back to looking stunned and was actually opening and closing her mouth soundlessly. Kyouko supposed that meant they'd hit the afternoon's threshold for conversational bombshells, so she made a show of glancing at her watch and making a dismayed sound. "Oh! I should get going, Kaasan will be expecting me home soon." She smiled at Tsunako-chan. "Why don't you think it over? If you decide you want to keep that part of your life to yourself, it's all right. We can go ahead and be friendly for as long as it lasts—it's better than nothing, right?" And would, perhaps, give her a chance to continue working on Tsunako-chan's qualms, if it seemed necessary.

She rose from her seat while Tsunako-chan was still blinking and dipped a little bow in Bianchi-san's direction. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Bianchi-san! I hope you'll join us next week. Yamamoto-kun and Gokudera-kun are nice boys, but they really don't know how to appreciate a nice piece of cake. It's all quantity over quality for boys." And might Yamamoto-kun forgive her for slandering his good name. She gave Tsunako-chan her sunniest smile. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tsunako-chan!" She waved at them both, tucking away the thoughtful way Bianchi-san was looking at her to study later, and swept out.

Well. Either that would take or it wouldn't. She'd give Tsunako-chan a few days to decide what she thought of all that, and they could move on from there.

* * *

Bianchi made herself comfortable on her branch and leaned back against the bole so she could look up at Reborn without getting a crick in her neck. "Okay, so who the hell is Sasagawa Kyouko?"

"A first-year who attends Namimori Chuu with Sawada Tsunako. Makes good but unexceptional grades. Not involved in any club activities, fairly social but seems to have very few intimates." Reborn kicked his feet in time to the facts as he listed them off. "Has one sibling, a brother a year older. Both parents are living. The father is a mid-level executive with ambitions; the mother doesn't work but supports those ambitions on the social side." He glanced down at her. "What did you think?"

What did she think? "That girl has a mind like a steel trap." Bianchi grinned, half-rueful. "And knows exactly how to hide it." Even though Reborn had told her to get the girl's measure, she'd still been a little surprised when the girl had set aside the charming airhead act to get down to business.

Though there wasn't any need to tell Reborn about that.

He made an interested sound. "Go on."

Bianchi drew a breath. "She reminds me of my mother. Sort of." Who'd been all smiling, smooth surfaces and gracefully vapid small-talk, and had been able to interrogate people so gently that they never even realized it had happened (unless they'd known to pay attention). "I was ready to swear there wasn't a single useful thought in her head till she decided it was time to ask Tsunako about the bodyguard business."

Reborn made another of his thoughtful noises. "What did Tsunako tell her?"

Because what Tsunako did with Kyouko's curiosity was perhaps as important as anything else. "It got interesting. I told her that the answers she was looking for were the kind that a person couldn't back out of, but Tsunako just told her it was better if she didn't know." Bianchi glanced down at the dark square of Tsunako's window. "And then Kyouko laid out the most cold-blooded analysis of what would happen if Tsunako cut her out of her secrets that I've ever heard a kid deliver. Hell, I've known Family heirs who couldn't do as neat a job as she did."

"In a world where Giorgio Barassi is his Family's preferred heir, that's not saying much."

Bianchi made a face at him. "You know what I mean."

"I suppose I must." Reborn fell silent, turning that over. "Tsunako?"

"Doesn't know which way to jump." It made sense. She was beginning to take this all seriously, maybe in spite of herself—the regular shooting lessons and the constant presence of bodyguards didn't really allow for anything else. Kyouko wasn't a part of that, not yet, and it made sense that Tsunako might be reluctant to let her one normal friend become part of the other part of her life.

Not that Tsunako probably recognized that that was what she was doing. Or that she wasn't going to be able to keep that part of her life from subsuming the rest of it, poor kid. Though maybe Kyouko had done some work in getting that point across.

"She would be an asset to the Family."

"No shit she would. Hell. I want that kid on our side, not anyone else's. We're lucky she wasn't born to the Cetrulli or something." Bianchi ran her fingers through her hair. "She seems willing enough, too, but left the decision in Tsunako's hands. Was really clear that it was all up to her, too."

Reborn made a discontented sound. "Pity."

Yeah, he would think so. "Grabby much?" She grinned at him. "I'm thinking it's going to be fun to watch the show, myself."

He frowned at her. "Sloppy thinking."

Bianchi laughed. "Naw. Kyouko thinks Tsunako's interesting. Kid's going to have to work pretty hard to keep that one out of it. I'd lay money on it."

Reborn didn't bother answering that, but he looked satisfied nonetheless.

* * *

Kyouko made sure to smile at Tsunako-chan and the boys the next morning, but shrugged when Tsunako-chan came by her desk at lunchtime. "No, I think I'll eat with Mochida-san today." That would give Tsunako-chan more of the time she needed to think, and Mochida _was_ starting to complain a little that she wasn't spending enough time with him. She smiled at Tsunako-chan. "Go on ahead without me."

Lunch with the kendo club wasn't precisely a _chore_ , but it wasn't as relaxing as lunch with Hana-chan or lunch with Tsunako-chan and the boys tended to be. When she ate with Mochida, she had to concentrate on being his girlfriend and letting the members of the kendo club see that happening. Listening attentively to Mochida and showing appreciation for his stories and finding subtle ways to flatter his ego took work in a way that sitting and laughing with Hana-chan didn't, and neither Tsunako-chan or the boys cared about having their egos stroked.

Their egos or anything else, Kyouko thought, when Mochida held her back at the end of lunch to propose catching a movie together. She blinked up at him with a practiced air of gratified surprise, though she wasn't really surprised by this latest effort to get her alone with him in something that approached privacy. She'd managed to out-maneuver him so far and had kept him from doing much more than stealing a few sloppy kisses, all without letting him suspect that was what she was doing, but that wasn't going to keep him satisfied for very much longer.

Drat it. She wished that Sakura and Yuuko would have transferred sooner so she could have selected Yamamoto-kun without upsetting the entire equilibrium of their class. Yamamoto-kun would never have made her worry about these things.

Fortunately, she'd planned ahead for this moment. "Oh, a movie!" She clapped her hands together in a show of delight. "Hana-chan and I were going to the movies this afternoon—we can all go together!"

She could just about hear the sound of his teeth grinding together, but he smiled—teeth clenched—and said, "Sure, that sounds great."

It was one more thing she was going to have to owe Hana-san, but there was no helping it.

One of these days she was going to have to permit Mochida to do at least some of the things he wanted so badly, but she wasn't in any hurry for it. She wished, not for the first time, that a boyfriend weren't so _necessary_.

There wasn't much help for it, though. One had to keep up appearances, and she was keeping a sharp eye out for ways of diverting Mochida's attention elsewhere. There were plenty of other girls at Namimori who would be delighted to take him off her hands. If she kept him at bay long enough, he'd certainly take up with one of them instead and she'd be able to coast on an ostensible broken heart for a while after that.

It would all pay off in the end. Most things did, as long as a person paid attention to what she was doing.

She texted Hana-chan under her desk while Neya-sensei droned on, letting her know about their change of plans for the afternoon, and paid just enough attention to their lessons not to attract attention while thinking about more interesting things. Tsunako-chan still looked troubled by yesterday's conversation, which was too bad when there was no need for it. But then, Tsunako-chan was the kind of person who had scruples, which was what Kyouko-san liked about her.

Inspiration struck her; perhaps it would be a good idea to remind Tsunako-chan that she'd meant it about being friendly. She had to rely on more old-fashioned forms of surreptitious communication—passing notes on the sly—and made a mental note to get Tsunako-chan's number later, assuming that she had her own phone.

Tsunako-chan looked surprised by the note and even more surprised by the invitation, but it cleared some of the trouble from her expression as she snuck a smile over her shoulder, nodding yes. Kyouko passed the lesson in English in wondering how much time Tsunako-chan had spent worrying about not getting to be friends anymore.

As if Kyouko intended to give up that easily.

Tsunako-chan looked so pleased to have been invited to the movies, and Mochida so put out by the fact that there was an entire crowd with her when they met up at the theater, that it put Kyouko into a good mood, which was lucky. She needed most of it. The movie they settled on wasn't really to her taste and Mochida claimed the seat next to hers, which was what boyfriends were supposed to do. At least the crowd meant he couldn't steer them to the back row, and the fact that Yamamoto-kun was sitting on his other side meant he couldn't try to steal kisses anyway.

It was all going to have to be a trade-off, she decided, and stared fixedly at the screen, holding herself in place as Mochida put the arm between their seats up. He wrapped his arm around her and drew her against him. No kissing in exchange for fairly blatant cuddling; that was acceptable. It would play well on the school gossip circuit, since she'd seen Ayaka-chan and Junko-chan sitting a few rows back when they'd come in. Her and Mochida's silhouettes would look fairly chaste, so no one besides Hana-chan would have to know that when he'd gotten his arm around her, it was so that he could put his hand on her breast.

Kyouko controlled her breathing carefully, leaned her head against his shoulder, and did her best not to wince whenever he squeezed too hard.

It was a very long ninety minutes, nevertheless. She was very glad to see the credits finally roll, and gladder still that Mochida lived in the wrong direction to walk her home and that she could walk with Hana-chan instead. Hana-chan walked very fast, frowning, and didn't say anything for three blocks. When she finally did, her tone was disgusted. "What I don't understand is why you picked _him_. We have a whole school full of perfectly nice boys, and you picked that one?"

Kyouko shrugged at her. "He suited my purposes."

Hana-chan's mouth tightened. "That's cold."

"Maybe, but he hasn't noticed yet. And he won't." He didn't think clearly enough for that, even when he wasn't preoccupied with other things.

"That wasn't what I meant."

Kyouko looked at Hana-chan, blinking a bit—oh. Of course. She hastened to reassure her. "I don't really mind, you know. It's not so bad." But Hana-chan was a romantic and didn't seem to be buying it, so it was time to change the subject. "Anyway. I was thinking—he might get on well with Chisato-senpai. What do you think?" Chisato-senpai was in Mochida's year and liked him (and most of the rest of the boys in the school, come to it) almost as much as she liked being popular.

Hana-chan frowned and said, "I guess." She looked like she still had more that she wanted to say, but she didn't, so they spent the rest of the walk home talking about Chisato-senpai and other, safer things.

* * *

Ayaka-chan and Junko-chan didn't fail her; the school's gossip circuit fairly buzzed the next day with talk about her and Mochida, just like it was supposed to. Kyouko put in plenty of practice at looking wide-eyed and blushing on cue and making it look as if she were trying very hard to change the subject. She supposed there was a certain satisfaction in seeing things working out the way she'd planned for them to, though it did mean spending her lunch with classmates clustered around her desk and letting them get on with dissecting every detail of her and Mochida's developing romance.

Tsunako-chan wasn't one of those classmates. That wasn't a surprise either; even now that Yuuko and Sakura had transferred away, she still tended to hang back from the rest of them, though Kyouko often caught her looking on and watching the way their social interchanges worked. She was watching today, too, and frowning just a bit over it like she was seeing something she didn't quite understand. Kyouko would have liked to ask her what it was, but there was no chance of doing that, not yet. Perhaps once Tsunako-chan had decided.

She estimated another day for that, two at the most, but Tsunako-chan surprised her by catching her during phys ed. She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt and bit her lip till it had gone white before saying, all in a rush, "Do you want to come over to my house after school? I wanted to, um. Talk to you. But you don't have to if you're busy—"

"I'd love to," Kyouko said over the stuttering tumble of her apologies, pleased, because talking sounded promising. That didn't make Tsunako-chan look any less nervous, which also seemed like a good sign.

The boys took it in stride when Kyouko left the school gates with them and Tsunako-chan; they spent the first part of the walk to Tsunako-chan's house talking about how much homework Neya-sensei liked to assign and the second part listening to Gokudera-kun losing his temper and treating them to an impromptu lecture on the foundational place of algebra in modern civilization (after Yamamoto-kun had wondered aloud what earthly use factoring polynomials might possibly be). Gokudera-kun punctuated his lecture with furious gestures of his cigarette and remarkably vivid curses; Kyouko enjoyed the performance probably just as much as Yamamoto-kun did, if for different reasons.

She _did_ hope that Tsunako-chan was planning on explaining things, because she really wanted to know why someone who dressed, spoke, and acted like a delinquent was well-versed enough to also talk like he read textbooks in his spare time.

Whatever else was going on, the boys seemed to take the bodyguard thing seriously. Kyouko knew that Yamamoto-kun lived in the opposite direction from the quiet neighborhood Tsunako-chan directed them to, and goodness only knew what Gokudera-kun's living circumstances were, but they stuck to Tsunako-chan's side till they came up to the gate with the Sawada name on a plate beside it. Tsunako-chan hesitated then and glanced at them. "Um. Kyouko-chan and I are going to talk about the, um. Mafia game. Did you two want to come in, too?"

It must have been the first time she'd issued an invitation like that, because she looked and sounded uncertain about whether she ought to do such a thing. Kyouko filed that, plus the words _mafia game_ , to the side so she could watch the boys' reactions.

Yamamoto-kun grinned. "Sure, sounds like fun."

It made Gokudera-kun look like he wanted to murder him, even as he was already shaking his head _no_. "I can't, I—got things. To do. Yeah. Sorry, Sawada-san."

That was interesting, because if Kyouko were any judge at all, he had really, really wanted to say _yes_ instead. And Tsunako-chan looked, just faintly, relieved that he hadn't—well, that made sense; it was obvious that she wasn't as comfortable with Gokudera-kun, despite his apparent devotion to her. "Oh, well. I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning, then." She smiled at him and they left him on the sidewalk by himself, practically chewing on the butt of his cigarette in silent fury.

Another mystery to unravel, that, and by the sounds of it she was going to get the chance to do it. Kyouko smiled at nothing in particular as Tsunako-chan ushered them inside, calling out that she was home. They were still exchanging their shoes for slippers when a woman came to greet them. She had the same slight build and coloring as Tsunako-chan did and her smile was bright. "Oh, so you must be Tsunako's friends! Reborn had said you would be coming over."

Kyouko wanted to blink at that—he had? But she hadn't seen him since the other day at lunch, and was fairly certain Tsunako-chan hadn't seen him all afternoon. Another mystery. She gave Sawada-san her best smile. "I'm Sasagawa Kyouko. Thank you so much for letting us intrude this afternoon!" She capped it off with a bow, extra-polite, while Yamamoto-kun introduced himself as well.

Sawada-san beamed at them both. "Nonsense, it's not an intrusion at all. I'm just glad to see Tsunako finally bringing friends home. You all can go upstairs, honey. I left some snacks in your room."

Kyouko ignored the tactless _finally_ and Tsunako-chan's tiny wince and smiled back at Sawada-san. "Oh, that sounds lovely. Thank you!"

"My room is this way." Tsunako-chan sounded like she wanted to put an end to the whole conversation, which Kyouko couldn't blame her for. She led them upstairs to a bedroom that was cluttered without being too messy. Kyouko cast a quick, surreptitious look around it but didn't see anything terribly unusual about it—the bedspread was pink; there was a shelf over the bed with a collection of battered stuffed animals, but the walls were otherwise undecorated. The desk had things stacked on it—some schoolbooks, but mostly manga and magazines. And there was a kotatsu sitting in the center of the floor, currently occupied by a tray of cookies and sodas and Bianchi-san, who was leafing through a magazine.

Kyouko smiled when she looked up. "Oh, Bianchi-san! I didn't know you were going to be here." She claimed a seat at the kotatsu next to her, smiling as she folded her legs beneath herself. "It's so nice to see you again so soon."

Bianchi-san marked the page by folding the corner down as Yamamoto-kun and Tsunako-chan got settled. "Oh, I'm always around." She glanced at the other two; her smile turned a bit crooked. "No Hayato?"

Tsunako-chan shrugged. "He said he couldn't."

Bianchi-san's mouth crooked even further. "I suppose he did."

Kyouko selected one of the cookies as she thought about that exchange, yet another one of the strange interactions that seemed to surround Tsunako-chan these days. Such interesting people. She nibbled the edge of her cookie and smiled across the table at Tsunako-chan. "So! Tell me about the mafia game."

Tsunako-chan's expression immediately twisted like she'd just gotten a stomachache and was only partially resigned to it. "It's not really a game."

She'd already said that, but Yamamoto-kun bounced into the conversation before Kyouko could point that out. "Sawada-chan is the heir to a mafia empire, and I'm one of her bodyguards! So are Gokudera and Bianchi-san and Reborn. We all have to make sure she stays safe from her Family's enemies."

He got full marks for making that all come off like it was the best thing ever, Kyouko decided, while Tsunako-chan looked like she wanted to hide her face from his enthusiasm. Bianchi-san, sounding amused, made a correction to that. "Bodyguard and tutor. And also, not _the_ heir. An heir."

Kyouko nibbled on her cookie, absorbing all that and watching Tsunako-chan. She let the things Yamamoto-kun said go by unchallenged, however embarrassing she found them, but lost the _how is this my life?_ and _everyone I know is crazy_ expressions at the first mention of the other heir. "Exactly." Her tone was flat. "There's another heir and he can get on with being the heir just fine without me."

That had all the hallmarks of being an argument she'd laid out many times. So did the way Bianchi-san countered it with, "Remember, it's not actually that easy."

Interesting. Kyouko swallowed the last of the cookie and dusted the crumbs from her fingers, perfectly aware that Yamamoto-kun was watching her and that Tsunako-chan looked like she expected her to laugh at the joke. "The mafia? I see." She smiled when they all looked at her. "I was thinking the yakuza, actually, but this makes more sense, given the Italy connection."

Yamamoto-kun's eyes were laughing, Bianchi-san looked pleased, and Tsunako-chan stared at her in clear disbelief. Kyouko shrugged at her; she'd _said_ she wanted to go to Italy, hadn't she? Of course she was aware of some of the more interesting facets of Italian culture.

She selected another cookie. "So. Perhaps you could tell me a little more?"

They really were very good cookies. She would have to ask Sawada-san for the recipe before she went home.

Kyouko kept smiling until Tsunako-chan managed to understand that she was serious about wanting to know more. Then she listened carefully as Tsunako-chan stumbled into an account of the afternoon she'd come home from school to find her father waiting to tell her just what it was he did for a living and how she was descended from one of the oldest, most powerful Families in the mafia—how she was the only legitimate heir that Family had left—and how that had changed everything. It did explain a lot, even if there were things that Tsunako-chan wasn't saying. Kyouko let her ramble on, with occasional remarks from Yamamoto-kun and Bianchi-san to supplement the story, while her mind raced ahead to fill in some of the blanks.

Two heirs, but Tsunako-chan was the legitimate heir. The other one was male, and Tsunako-chan didn't really want to have anything to do with any of it, though most of her protests were resigned ones. Pro forma.

Put together like that, the conclusion was obvious. Kyouko leaned her chin on her hand after Tsunako-chan came to her conclusion, still eyeing Kyouko like she expected her to start laughing any second. Kyouko hummed between her teeth. "Did you at least get an omiai for the other heir, or do they expect you to marry him sight unseen?"

Yamamoto-kun looked like something had just come together for him; Bianchi-san looked delighted.

And Tsunako-chan scowled. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to marry him." She stopped then and stared at Kyouko. "Wait—how did you—you believe all this?"

Kyouko shrugged at her. "Of course." Perhaps it would help to point out that Tousan sometimes had shady dealings? She considered it for a moment, but—no, if it were only her and Tsunako-chan, she would. "It makes a number of things make sense." She smiled at Tsunako-chan then, open and pleased. "I'm so glad you told me. We're going to be _such_ good friends." She dusted the crumbs from her fingers again and smiled around the table. "So, since we're here, do you two want to get started on Neya-sensei's homework? I bet it'll be easier if we all work together."

Tsunako-chan looked so surprised by the change of subject—or perhaps by Kyouko's open declaration of friendship—that she blinked for several seconds before uttering a short, disbelieving laugh. "Neya-sensei's homework. Sure, why not?"

Kyouko smiled at her, pleased, because this _was_ going to be lovely, just as soon as Tsunako-chan permitted herself to believe that it was real.

She turned out to be right, of course. The homework went much easier, and faster, with the three of them working together. By the time she glanced at the time and realized how late it was getting, they'd gotten through most of it and she'd been able to explain some of the trickier bits to Tsunako-chan. Sawada-san invited them back as they were getting their shoes back on, and Kyouko, satisfied with how things were coming together, felt that it had been a most productive afternoon.

She continued to feel that way until Yamamoto-kun followed her down the sidewalk and said, "You mind if I walk with you?"

The question only sounded casual; when Kyouko glanced up at him, she saw that he wasn't even pretending to smile. "No, of course not. We might as well, since we're heading the same way." Now what could he want?

The nice thing about Yamamoto-kun was that he didn't leave a person hanging. They walked a few paces down the sidewalk as he frowned. Then he made up his mind and said, "I know this really isn't any of my business, but I thought you should know that Mochida-senpai, um. Likes to brag."

The pit of her stomach went cold. Kyouko sucked in a breath and was very proud of how calm she managed to keep her expression. "Does he?"

Yamamoto-kun nodded. "Yeah. Um. Most of the sports teams know the two of you sat together at the movies yesterday."

What a discreet way of describing that awful ninety minutes. Kyouko gritted her teeth together until her jaw ached. "I see."

Yamamoto-kun took a breath and expelled it between his teeth, puffing out his cheeks. "Yeah. Like I said, I know it's none of my business, but I thought you would want to know."

"Thank you," Kyouko managed, because it was important to be grateful to the people who did one a service no matter how irritated one happened to be. "I do." _Drat_ Mochida and his big, stupid mouth.

They walked in silence for half a block before Yamamoto-kun said, "You want any help?" He glanced her way, eyes sober with the offer to lend whatever assistance he could.

It was a tempting offer. "I—need to think, first." Technically, this didn't have to be a bad thing. Mochida talked about the things she permitted him to do, she let it percolate through the school, and then found a reason for him to end it all when her purposes had been served—but that left a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach and a sick, iron taste in her mouth. Letting it go could get out of hand so easily, could leave her dealing with a lot of nasty innuendo for—a long time.

 _Drat_ Mochida.

"Um." Yamamoto-kun cleared her throat; she didn't like the way that sounded, reluctant and embarrassed. "I think that, um. There might be a bet. About how long it will take to, um. You know."

Kyouko hissed between her teeth in spite of herself. "How dare he. How _dare_ he."

Yamamoto-kun blew out another breath. "Um. Yeah, I don't know. Sorry." He glanced down at her again and reached over to give her hand a quick squeeze. "Beat him up for you, if you want."

Kyouko blinked, startled at first by the offer. Well, Yamamoto _had_ been someone she could count on since the day she'd caught him looking a little too long at Ogihara-kun and had to take him aside to explain how she preferred looking at Chisato-senpai just to keep him from panicking. "Let me think about it." It was a possibility, but there was no sense in acting in haste. "But—maybe."

"Just say the word," he promised.

That eased some of the cold feeling, at least, so she managed to find a smile for him. "You're probably the nicest boy I know."

He grinned. "Does that mean you've decided to dump Mochida-senpai and go out with me after all?"

"Silly boy." Kyouko swatted his shoulder lightly. "You and I don't need to be dating in order to compare notes on pretty boys like Gokudera-kun." He colored up and she smiled in spite of her dark mood. Yes, she'd thought so.

Yamamoto-kun cleared his throat. "I wonder why he didn't come in with us."

She considered teasing him a bit more, but that would have been ungenerous. "I don't know. Does Bianchi-san know him?" It had seemed like she must.

"I guess." He shrugged. "They're both hitmen for the Ninth, way I understand it."

Hitmen? Tsunako-chan hadn't mentioned that part. Interesting. "Isn't he a little… young?"

"I guess. But he's pretty good with the bombs he uses." Yamamoto-kun trailed off, looking thoughtful about something, before he shook it off. "Anyway, I've never seen the two of them together."

Interesting, and something to look into. But—later. Tempting as it was to let that puzzle distract her from her own problems, she had other things to deal with first. Ignoring a problem rarely made it go away, or so Tousan always said.

She and Yamamoto-kun didn't say anything else till they came to the corner where their paths diverged. Kyouko stopped to look at Yamamoto-kun full in the face. "Thank you."

His smile was wry. "Hey, don't mention it."

Definitely the nicest boy she knew. She watched him amble on his way. It really was a pity they weren't each other's types.

Yamamoto-kun had said that nearly all the sports teams knew, so she stopped by her brother's room after dinner. He was supposed to have been working on homework; when she let herself in, he hastily stuffed the boxing magazine under his book before he realized it was her. "Niisan." She tried to make her tone disapproving, but couldn't help her smile. "If you don't keep your grades up, they'll kick you out of the boxing club. You know that, right?"

"I've been studying!" He waved a hand at the book in front of him. "I was just taking a little break."

He was all innocence, but Kyouko knew her brother better than that. "Of course. Just make sure those breaks don't last too long." She studied him for a moment, but if there was anything on his mind besides boxing and his magazine, she couldn't see it. "I wanted to ask you something." He brightened. "Have you heard anything about Mochida-senpai lately? Talked to him at all?"

Niisan's brow furrowed. "Mochida… oh, he's kendo, right? Man, I keep trying to get him to try boxing, he'd be extremely awesome at it—"

That either meant that he hadn't heard anything, or that if he had, it hadn't managed to penetrate the boxing haze. Kyouko felt a moment's wistfulness for the days when her brother had defended her from the world, but—no, she fought her own battles now, and it was better that way. "You're sure you haven't talked to him lately? Heard anything?"

"Huh? No, I don't think so—hey, did you hear that Tanaka joined the boxing club? Is that great or what?" Niisan beamed at her, all pride and enthusiasm.

Kyouko smiled at him. "That's really great, Niisan. Congratulations." She lingered for a few moments, letting him enthuse about Tanaka-senpai and the boxing club, before reminding him that he had studying to do and leaving him to it, fairly certain that he'd go right back to his magazine the moment she did.

* * *

Bianchi felt satisfied with the afternoon's work—Kyouko was going to be good for Tsunako, she could tell—right up until she said as much to Reborn, who merely grunted in reply. She squinted up at him. "That was not a happy sound, Reborn."

He grunted again. Bianchi sighed and made herself comfortable while she waited his thoughtful spell out. Presumably it had something to do with his decision to shadow Yamamoto and Kyouko home.

It was a long time before he said, "That one is young to play the games she does."

Bianchi raised her eyebrows. "She's older than some of the adults I've known in my time."

"Maybe. But she's inexperienced."

Bianchi considered the way he said that and let out a breath. "What's going on?"

He told her and she grimaced at how ugly it was. "That is young," she said, finally, because there were some things that a girl Kyouko's age shouldn't have to put up with, regardless of how well she played the social game. "We going to transfer him, too?" She considered that. "Or better, he could come down with food poisoning." The world might be better off with one less budding creep in it. Hayato would probably guess what had happened, but she doubted he'd say anything to Tsunako. He had to be plugged into the school's rumor mill by now; he'd understand.

Reborn huffed softly above her. "Tempting. Perhaps. I'd like to see what she does first. Perhaps what Tsunako does as well. Assuming she notices. Or that the girl says anything."

"She might," Bianchi said, not entirely sure which of the girls she meant. Maybe she meant both. "I'll study up on the Mochida twerp anyway, if you don't mind."

"I suppose everybody needs hobbies."

Bianchi grinned up at him and didn't need to be able to see his face to know that his smile was just as vicious as her own.

* * *

Kyouko would have liked to be surprised that there were already starting to be hints that the story Mochida had been circulating had begun to make the jump from the boys' circles to the girls'. She could see it in the quick, sidelong glances her classmates stole, the hints of speculation lurking in their eyes—subtle eddies in the currents that could signal a turn of the tide. She was going to have to do something.

She spent the morning brooding on what she could do and had not come to any real decision by lunch. Hana-chan swooped down on her before anyone else could and dragged her outside to eat and confer. "You need to know—" she began.

Kyouko shook her head. "I already know."

Some of the grim expression on Hana-chan's face eased. "Your brother?"

"No, I heard it from someone else." Though Niisan might be a plausible alibi for Yamamoto-kun. It wasn't like Niisan would mind, assuming he even noticed.

Though Hana-chan clearly wanted to know how she'd heard, if not from her brother, she immediately turned to more practical concerns. "I was sitting right next to you. You want me to say it's not true?"

Kyouko looked down at her bento, not really seeing it, and was tempted to say _yes_ , to deny the whole thing and to break it off with Mochida in affront. "I—it would be silly to have gone to all this trouble to get a boyfriend and then abandon it now."

"I don't see why. He's a creep." Hana-chan pushed her hair back from her face, frowning. "I say dump him and hold out for someone better." She shook her head. "I don't even know why you need a boyfriend right now, since so many of them are idiots. Or creeps. Creepy idiots."

No, Hana-chan wouldn't understand. Kyouko stirred her chopsticks through the sliced vegetables, wondering whether it was something she could explain, and decided not. "It's just one of those things. Like having just the right accessory for an outfit."

Hana-chan raised her eyebrows. "Pretty expensive accessory. Are you sure—"

"It'll be fine," Kyouko said. "I can handle it."

And she would, too, just as soon as she'd figured out how.

Tsunako-chan caught up to her between sprints in phys ed, worry wrinkling her forehead. "Are you—is everything okay?"

Kyouko blinked at her, giving her the best show of surprise she could manage. It wasn't difficult; she hadn't expected Tsunako-chan to have heard anything. "Of course I am! Why do you ask?"

Tsunako-chan chewed on her lower lip. "I don't—you've looked worried today. So I wondered."

"I looked worried?" Kyouko repeated, astonished, because she'd put extra effort into making sure to look as perfectly composed as ever.

It was the wrong approach to take; Tsunako-chan winced back. "I—maybe I was wrong! It just seemed like there's been something on your mind. I guess it was a weird impression I had."

Kyouko didn't know what to make of that, but Tsunako-chan looked so concerned that she'd given offense that reassuring her was the first thing to do. "I suppose there's something I've been thinking about, but it's nothing you need to worry about. I can take care of it."

"Oh, well…" Tsunako-chan chewed on her lip some more; if that was something she made a habit of, it was a wonder her mouth wasn't in tatters. "If there's anything I can do… you'll let me know, right?" She twisted her hands together. "Since we're friends?" She lowered her eyes, coloring. "I've never really had a friend before, but… I've always thought it would be nice to have someone to do things for." She glanced up, her eyes earnest. "Even if it's just to listen."

Kyouko drew a breath, weighing that offer against the risks of showing too much. On the other hand, Tsunako-chan had shared some things with her, so there was quid pro quo to consider. She smiled at Tsunako-chan, who was starting to look very nervous. "Do you want to work on your homework together this afternoon? Just the two of us?"

Tsunako-chan blinked, as if she were surprised by this non sequitur, then smiled as she got it. "I'd love to!"

She looked far less pleased later, once they were sitting across from each other—just the two of them—and Kyouko had explained that Mochida was telling things he had no right to. In fact, she looked downright indignant. "That's not right!" Tsunako-chan's face was flushed and her hands were curled into fists in front of her. "He shouldn't—that's—how dare he? Why would he lie like that?"

Oh, dear. She hadn't quite expected that. Kyouko reached across the table and laid her hands on top of Tsunako-chan's. "He's not lying." That was part of the real problem. Even if she denied it, he'd know it had been true.

Tsunako-chan's eyes went wide and her flush went deeper, all the way down her throat. "Oh!" Then she rallied, faster than Kyouko would have thought possible. "He still shouldn't say those kinds of things about you."

Kyouko released her hands and settled herself again. "No," she agreed. "He shouldn't." She curled her hands around her glass of lemonade, running her thumb through the condensation beading on the side as her thoughts turned in the tangled circles they'd been going in since Yamamoto-kun had first brought it up. They were beginning to be so familiar that they felt almost comfortable.

"You don't really like him, do you?"

The question startled Kyouko out of her thoughts. She stared at Tsunako-chan, disconcerted, until Tsunako-chan waved her hands and began to stutter out an apology for being rude. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that, it was really rude of me—"

That was twice now that Tsunako-chan had surprised her by seeing something Kyouko had thought she'd kept concealed. She held up a hand and Tsunako-chan's apologies stumbled to a halt. "Would you mind telling me why you thought that, please?" If she were giving herself away, then she needed to know. Wounded pride could just go hang.

Tsunako-chan's fading blush returned in full force. "I don't—I don't really know. It's just—" She threw her hands into the air. "I'm sorry."

Kyouko took a breath and let her frustration out on the exhale. "It's all right. It's true enough."

"Then why do you—" Tsunako-chan stopped and clapped a hand over her mouth, looking appalled at herself.

Kyouko couldn't help laughing a little at that. "Go out with him? Because I decided it was worth it." Had thought she'd had the measure of him. Had been overly optimistic, it seemed.

Tsunako-chan's eyes went very wide. "It's not, though." Her voice was soft. "Not worth that. Is it?"

Kyouko opened her mouth to say that it was, or that it didn't matter that much, and found that she couldn't, not to that clear, certain gaze. Not when Tsunako-chan was that earnest, even after seeing firsthand how awful people could be to each other. "I don't know. Maybe not."

Tsunako-chan was the one who reached across the table then to touch Kyouko's hand. "We should stop him." Her voice was quiet and very, very sure. "If you actually liked him, it would be one thing. But you don't. So he shouldn't get to do this to you. It's not right."

It had been a long time since Kyouko had felt shaken by anything, but Tsunako-chan's eyes were practically glowing, and—she was only saying what Yamamoto-kun had implied and Hana-chan had hinted at, but it was reinforced by her own impulses, and—"There's a reason." She barely recognized her own voice, it was so strained. Tsunako-chan's eyes went a little wider. "Boys aren't—they're nice enough, but I'd mostly rather—I'd rather spend my time with girls."

It was only the second time she'd ever admitted it out loud and she didn't know what she would do if Tsunako-chan took the news badly. Kyouko barely breathed as Tsunako-chan stared at her, eyes wide, before she said, "Oh. Oh, Kyouko." She released Kyouko's hand but was scrambling around the kotatsu before Kyouko had time to do more than flinch. The arms she wrapped around Kyouko were awkward, but—"You shouldn't have to let him touch you just because of that. It's not _right_. You shouldn't have to do anything you don't want!"

Kyouko sat, frozen by that, before she reached up to lay a hand on Tsunako-chan's shoulder. "It's okay, I—" She knew how social games worked, all their little rules and how to manipulate them to get her own ends. She knew what the costs and the trade-offs were. She'd grown up known them, and hadn't ever worried about how fair they were. Or weren't.

"It's not," Tsunako-chan said, low and fierce, and of course she was thinking of her own situation, but Kyouko couldn't blame her for that. "You shouldn't—there's no reason you should have to put up with that. There has to be a better way. You deserve that."

"You did hear me tell you that I mostly prefer girls, didn't you?" Kyouko asked, all bemused.

"Then you should wait to find someone you like!" Tsunako-chan flared. "Whichever! It doesn't matter."

Kyouko closed her hand on Tsunako-chan's shoulder without quite deciding to do it. "That's not how it works."

"We'll make it be how it works!"

It didn't make any sense to believe that, even when Tsunako-chan's voice rang with such determination, but Kyouko wanted to. Very much. "Tsunako-chan…"

Tsunako-chan released her and gave her an intent look. "At least dump him. He's a creep, he's being a creep to you, so you don't have to stay with him when everyone knows he's a creep, right?" She bit her lip. "Wouldn't that be better than—than—"

Kyouko began to shake her head, but—Tsunako-chan did have a point. The rumor mill was already turning. "I might as well." If nothing else, she wouldn't have to put up with his attempts to get closer any more. Which would be a relief, if she were completely honest with herself. So that was one advantage. There might be others.

Tsunako-chan seemed relieved; perhaps that was one of them. "Oh. _Good._ " She ventured a tiny smile. "That will be a lot better for you, don't you think?"

Kyouko drew a breath and nodded. "Yes," she said. "I suppose it will be." And if she were going to continue being honest with herself, the relief of knowing that she was going to do something about Mochida—something definitive, before things had to go any further—already made her feel much better.

But now, perhaps it was time to turn to more comfortable topics. "Shall we work on our homework? If we get it done now, we'll have more of the weekend to ourselves."

Tsunako-chan blinked before she smiled, rueful. "I guess that would be nice."

Kyouko thought so herself, but suspected that things were not so straightforward for Tsunako-chan. "Do you already have plans for the weekend?"

"Weekends are for lessons." Tsunako-chan sounded more resigned than anything else. "From Reborn and Bianchi-san."

"Oh?" Kyouko dug into her bookbag for her books and notebooks. "What kinds of lessons?" Best not to sound too curious; it might embarrass Tsunako-chan or make her retreat into silence.

"Weird things." Tsunako-chan made a face. "Very weird things."

Kyouko studied her for a moment, wondering what things Tsunako-chan still wasn't telling her. Well. It would all come out eventually, wouldn't it? She could be patient. "Well, in that case, let's get this math homework out of the way, shall we?"

* * *

That was Friday; Kyouko had made plans for Saturday, shopping with Hana-chan, who looked relieved when Kyouko glanced across a rack of shirts and said, casual, "You can say it's a lie if you like."

Sunday was a quiet day; the kendo team had a match scheduled. Kyouko had originally planned to attend, but circumstances had changed since she'd told Mochida that she would be there. She passed the day quietly, finishing the last of her homework and laying plans for the ways Mochida might react and how best to confront him.

She half-wished he would just call her so they could have it out that way, but her phone remained silent all evening. Calling him wasn't anything she cared to do, not when she'd decided to adopt a chilly, offended front.

Monday dawned clear. She took extra care with her uniform and hair and set off for Namimori Chuu with her head held high and determination in her soul.

One way or another, things were going to change by the time the day was over.

Some of the other members of the kendo team also had girlfriends, so she didn't find it too surprising that there was a certain amount of quiet talk already buzzing around the school by the time she arrived. She pretended to be oblivious to the glance cast her way and danced out of the way Ayaka-chan wanted to draw her into a conversation about Mochida by turning it to Ayaka-chan herself. At lunch she lingered in the classroom just long enough to give Mochida a chance to approach before falling in with Tsunako-chan and the boys and heading upstairs to the roof to eat. The snub wasn't a subtle one, but then, neither was Mochida.

Yamamoto-kun got it, at any rate. He grinned at her over his bento, looking relieved, while Gokudera-kun seemed intent on deconstructing something that had happened over the weekend—some encounter with a group of thugs that the three of them had fought? Though Tsunako-chan seemed more embarrassed by the whole thing than anything else.

Kyouko made a mental note of that—there was more to this mafia game of theirs than Tsunako-chan had let on, she felt sure of it—and sailed back downstairs after lunch with the confident sense that things were falling into place.

Junko-chan wanted to talk about Mochida after lunch and was far less artful about it than Ayaka-chan had been. Instead of hinting around the subject, she asked about him outright, which Kyouko had been counting on her to do. She mustered her coldest tones and looked up at Junko-chan. "I have no interest in talking about Mochida-senpai," she said, dropping a generous helping of disdain into her tone and pitching her voice just loud enough to carry.

There was a lot of surreptitious texting going on under desks and behind books that afternoon. Kyouko pretended not to notice it at all and only glanced at her own phone from time to time. It took until fairly late in the afternoon for the news to reach Mochida, which was less efficient than it could have been, but that was fine. He figured things out before she had to change for phys ed and sent her a message demanding a meeting immediately after school. Kyouko frowned a little at his choice of location—he wanted to meet in the secluded yard behind the school for privacy, did he? That suggested a number of things, none of them entirely to her liking, but at least it was a meeting. With any luck, they could get this over with and be done with it.

She let him dangle as long as she could before sending her reply, brushed aside Hana-chan's offer to walk home together, and made her way against the tide of students streaming away from the building in order to find her way around to the back of the school, which was quiet and sheltered from easy view of the windows or the sports fields. Their teachers liked the yard behind the building for when they needed a bit of time away from student eyes, or so she'd heard, and lots of people met here to confess to each other.

There was no one in the yard but Mochida when she arrived; he was pacing the length of it, expression dark. He whirled on her when he realized that she'd arrived, scowling, and said, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Kyouko stared at him, keeping her expression calm and chilly, and counted off ten heartbeats before raising her eyebrows at him, which was one of Kaasan's techniques, and worked as well on him as it did on anyone Kaasan had cause to be displeased with. "I don't know, senpai. Why don't you tell me?"

He wasn't completely stupid (she wouldn't have put up with him at all if he were); she saw the understanding flash across his face. He knew that she was aware of the things he'd been saying about her and that she was unhappy about it. The next moment he spread his hands and gave her the smile and shrug that had made him seem fairly charming and attractive. "Aw, c'mon, you gotta help me out here. You're acting all pissed off and I haven't even done anything." His tone was wheedling—conciliating—and he'd dropped some of the open irritation.

Did he really think he was going to be able to talk his way out of this? Kyouko narrowed her eyes, studying that placating smile, and concluded that he did. More fool he. "No," she said, cold and deliberate. "You haven't. But you like to talk as if you had, don't you?"

Mochida flushed; that shot had hit home. "What are you talking about? I don't get it."

The problem was that he'd never bothered to pay attention to her capabilities at all. Kyouko gave him a long, cold look, counting off her rapid heartbeats. "I don't know which is more offensive," she said. "That you kiss and tell, that you exaggerate everything, that you have a bet with Okita-senpai that you can get me in bed by the end of the summer, or that you only think that bet is only worth five thousand yen."

He was surprised enough to blurt out, "How did you—" before he recalled himself and laughed. "Kyouko, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Stop using my given name." She bit out each word, enunciating them precisely. "You have no right to it." She waited a moment for that to sink in and continued. "As to the other, did you really think I wouldn't find out? That you could make up lies about me to entertain your friends and yourself and that I wouldn't know about it? That's _pathetic_. Extremely pathetic." Kyouko paused a moment to gauge the level of the flush creeping up his throat. "It amazes me that you managed to conceal how pathetic you are long enough to persuade me to date you."

Even his ears were turning red; he had forgotten that he was trying to hide how angry he was. " _Persuade_ you?" Mochida took a step towards her, hands curling and uncurling at his side. "I didn't have to persuade you, you practically threw yourself at me."

Kyouko kept an eye on his hands and his eyes. "Is that what you've told yourself?" She laughed and watched him flinch from it. "Really? When you had to ask me four different times if I would date you? _Please_. You shouldn't flatter yourself so much, senpai. It makes you even less attractive."

That was the last pebble clicking into place to trigger the landslide. Mochida made an inarticulate sound of fury and came at her.

If he'd been any less angry, if she hadn't been ready and expecting it and planning for it, it never would have worked. He was larger than she was, stronger, and more trained for such things. As in everything else, though, he had underestimated her, so Kyouko was able to step aside from his rush, seize his wrist, and use his momentum to twist it behind him and bring him down, just like every aikido lesson Haruna-sensei had given her had trained her to do (because, as Kaasan said, sometimes words weren't enough to deflect an opponent's blow, and she had been determined not to let Niisan fight any more battles for her sake). She followed up her advantage, twisting his arm tight and pressing her knee against the small of his back, holding him down as he swore at her.

"Now let me tell you how this is going to go," she said, making her tones sweet and cheerful. "Whenever anyone asks you why you and I are no longer dating, you'll tell them it's because I found out you were spreading those nasty lies about me. You'll make it very clear that they _were_ lies. And if you should happen to convince someone else to date you, you will keep your mouth shut about anything you and she happen to do in private. Do you understand me so far?"

"What happens if I don't, you crazy bitch?" He sounded positively furious, though that changed to a grunt of discomfort as she twisted his arm tighter.

"Then I'll have a splendid time making sure the entire school knows how a tiny first-year girl dislocated the kendo team captain's shoulder," Kyouko told him, applying a bit more pressure to his arm.

He yelped; the sound was gratifying. "No one would ever believe you!"

Before Kyouko could answer, someone else said, "Oh, I don't know. I think they would." When she looked up, surprised, she saw that Yamamoto-kun was grinning hard and that Gokudera-kun was right beside him, holding up his phone and recording the whole thing. "She's got witnesses, you know." Tsunako-chan was hanging back, standing behind the boys. Her face was a little pale, but no less determined for it.

Kyouko felt the shudder run through Mochida then. "You _bitch_."

Kyouko set aside the unexpected presence of allies and twisted his arm more tightly. "What was that, senpai? I didn't quite understand it."

He yelped as she bore down on his shoulder. "All right! I'll do it, okay?"

"What is it that you'll be doing?" Kyouko asked him.

"Saying we broke up because I was spreading lies." His voice was taut and angry.

"And?" she prompted him.

"Keeping my mouth shut in the future."

"Good," she said. "Your word on it, if you please."

She thought that he was going to protest and twisted his arm a little further. He grunted. "I promise."

"Thank you." Kyouko leaned down and said, quietly, "If you break it, I'll know. Remember that. And I won't forgive you for it." She gave him a moment to absorb that before rising and letting go of him. "I never want to speak to you again," she said as he scrambled to his feet. "Get out of my sight."

Mochida gave her one last resentful look and went.

Kyouko watched him go, taking deep breaths and finally registering the adrenaline coursing through her, making her hands want to shake. Then she turned to the boys and to Tsunako-chan. "My goodness," she said, as cheerfully as she could, while Gokudera-kun fiddled with his phone. "What are the three of you doing here?"

She'd thought that Yamamoto-kun would be the one to answer, but Tsunako-chan did. "Reborn said you and Mochida-senpai would be meeting here. I thought that maybe we should come along too, just in case."

Kyouko blinked, considering that. "I had it under control. You didn't need to do that."

Tsunako-chan shrugged at her, helpless. "Maybe? But you don't have to, right? Since we're friends?"

Kyouko drew a breath, surprised, watching Yamamoto-kun grin and Gokudera-kun give her a stealthy, half-respectful glance. "Oh," she said. "I—suppose you're right. Thank you."

Tsunako-chan's smile was shy. "You're welcome." She laughed then, rueful. "Though I guess you didn't need that much help after all."

Kyouko dusted her hands off, refusing to let them shake. "The witnesses help, though. And the video." Her word against Mochida's probably would have gone her way, but—this was better. "Thank you."

"It was Gokudera's idea." Yamamoto-kun grinned and elbowed him.

Kyouko waited until Gokudera-kun had finished snarling at him to smile. "Thank you, Gokudera-kun."

He flushed and muttered something indistinct that might have been an acknowledgment.

Yamamoto-kun laughed and checked the time. "I have to get to practice," he announced. "Guess I'll see all of you in the morning." He loped off, still grinning, leaving the three of them.

Tsunako-chan nibbled her lip, glancing at them. "Um… do the two of you want to come over and work on homework?" she offered. "It's just going to be me this afternoon, since Kaasan and Bianchi-san are running errands together."

Gokudera-kun's face went faintly green, but he nodded enthusiastically. "Of course, Sawada-san! That sounds great!"

Kyouko smiled at them. "Yes," she said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. "It does."

* * *

Kyouko found that she wasn't very surprised when Bianchi-san fell into step with her on the walk home. "Bianchi-san." She smiled up at her, bright and pleased. "How did your errands go?"

Bianchi-san shrugged. "Well enough. I was wondering. How would you have settled Mochida if the other three hadn't shown up?"

"Mm." Kyouko walked a few steps in silence, studying Bianchi-san through a sidelong glance. Her expression of polite curiosity didn't provide much to work with beyond the question itself. This was, perhaps, some kind of test. Or Bianchi-san wanted to learn something about her. Well, so be it. Kyouko smiled, a touch rueful, and said, "I suppose I would have needed to dislocate his shoulder."

"Do you think that would have been sufficient?"

It had all the hallmarks of being an academic inquiry, like Neya-sensei demanding the proof to an equation, so Kyouko straightened her shoulders. "It would have gotten his attention, plus showed him that he's not as good as he thinks he is. I have enough social capital that I could have ridden out the aftermath." Between Hana-chan and Yamamoto-kun, and to a lesser extent Gokudera-kun and Tsunako-chan, she'd have weathered it, at any rate, though it would have taken a long time to rebuild her place in Namimori's social sphere.

If she wanted to. That was a peculiar thought to have, one worth taking a longer look at, but Bianchi-san was already talking. "That's a sloppy plan. It depends on too many outside variables. What would you have done if it hadn't worked? Or if he'd overwhelmed you?"

"I would have dealt with it." Terse, perhaps, but the truth. Kyouko glanced at Bianchi-san, who looked back with her eyebrows lifted, and repeated herself. "I would have dealt with it." She'd thought it through ahead of time and decided that she could have lived with the worst. They came to a crosswalk and Kyouko looked up at the light, waiting for it to change, thinking about what the worst could have been. "Though I'm glad that I didn't have to."

"You're used to dealing with things on your own." It wasn't quite a question, nor entirely an observation. Bianchi-san's expression remained neutral.

"Yes." Surely it was obvious that she was.

"And yet you accepted help when it was offered." The light changed and they stepped out into the crosswalk. Bianchi-san's tone was thoughtful as she continued. "You decided to make overtures of friendship to Tsunako. Why?"

She'd wondered when someone was going to get around to asking about that. Kyouko glanced Bianchi-san's way, considering and discarding half a dozen of her prepared answers. "She's different," she said at last, when she'd settled on the simplest response, which had the added virtue of being the truth. "She looks at things differently than most people do. I like that. And she seems to be collecting people who are also interesting. I like that, too."

They came to her corner; Bianchi-san made the turn without pause, and that wasn't surprising either. She gave Kyouko another of those long, thoughtful looks. "You took the news of the mafia very calmly."

Another not-quite-a-question. Kyouko paused on the sidewalk and waited for Bianchi-san to stop as well. She looked politely curious, no more, though it was surely a façade. Well, no matter. "As I said, I'd guessed yakuza to begin with. It was an oversight when I already knew that three of you had connections to Italy."

Bianchi-san's eyebrows drifted up; Kyouko was fairly sure it was a genuine reaction. "Are you really as cold-blooded as that makes you sound?"

Kyouko thought about it. "I don't think so," she decided. "But I've always known that there were fewer ways for me to get what I want from life, since I'm a girl, so I would have to be very clear in my own mind about what I was doing and why." She considered that; it still sounded cold-blooded. "This is what I'm good at, I suppose. People. Social things. So it's what I use. If I were smarter, I would use that. Or if I were really athletic, or more than just pretty in an average sort of way. But I'm not, so this is what I do instead. I'm rather good at it, don't you think?"

"Dangerously so. You're going to be terrifying in a few more years." Bianchi-san's mouth quirked, and Kyouko inclined her head, acknowledging the compliment. "What is it that you want?"

Kyouko looked up, tracing her eyes over the deepening color of the sky. "I'd assumed that I would probably go into politics someday, once I found the right husband to stand behind." She looked down and saw that Bianchi-san looked disapproving. "You think I should do it for myself, don't you? So does Hana-chan. She and I argue over it a lot." She shrugged. "But I prefer to stand back a bit and work, rather than be right in the middle of things. I _could_ do it, I just don't care to."

Bianchi-san's smile was crooked. "If you aren't a Mist, I'll eat my own cooking."

A Mist? Interesting. Kyouko added that to the list of things she was going to have to find out more about and smiled at Bianchi-san. "Yes, well. That's what I had thought of doing." She shrugged. "But Tsunako-chan. She's not as good at people, is she? Though perhaps she's going to have to be, where she's going. So she'll need me. Or someone like me."

Bianchi-san gave her another long, measuring look. "Do you know what it is that you're talking about doing?"

Kyouko paused, considering it. "Of course not. I barely know anything about what Tsunako-chan will do as the wife of the Vongola Tenth—that's what his title will be? I thought so—or much about how the mafia works. I have an enormous amount of catching up to do." She waited a moment and added, "If you mean, do I know that I'm discussing a lifelong commitment to the criminal underworld, which suggests that my life expectancy will be a lot shorter than otherwise, then yes. I'm aware of that."

Bianchi-san's mouth curved, slowly. "I see. How silly of me for asking."

Kyouko gestured, brushing it aside. "This will be better than politics," she said. "Tsunako-chan is far more sensible than most boys I've ever met. If I tell her something is important, I'll be able to do it without having to coddle her ego."

Bianchi-san laughed then, bright and amused. "You know, I think it's a good thing you're going to be on our side."

Kyouko smiled, keeping it properly demure. "Well of course, Bianchi-san. That goes without saying."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also submitted for Ladies Big Bang, with the consequent result that the ever-marvelous Esmenet put together a fanmix, [Let Them Eat Cake](http://esmenet.dreamwidth.org/81124.html) for this fic. Go and check it out, because it's awesome!


	3. Gokudera and Bianchi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsunako gives Gokudera a Family.

Freelance hitmen did not turn down plummy job offers from the Vongola Ninth, but when Hayato had found out who else was working the job, he very nearly did as his stomach churned in automatic response to his sister's—half-sister's—name. He didn't, because he was way too young to commit suicide, career or otherwise, and told himself that he'd find a way to deal with the nausea that came of looking at the hag. When his plane touched down at Narita, Reborn was on hand to greet him and informed him that there would be a division of labor—the hag would be responsible for the evenings and weekends, while Hayato would handle the school hours. The two of them wouldn't ever have to be in direct contact. It had seemed reasonable enough at the time, and then Hayato had met Sawada-san and pledged himself to her service (and she had _accepted_ that, which was the really amazing thing), and Hayato had decided that he could cope with the hag's presence for Sawada-san's sake.

Hunched over a wastebasket with his stomach doing its level best to turn itself inside out, Hayato realized that he should have known it wasn't going to be that easy. That wasn't the way his luck ran.

Everything around him was chaos; Sasagawa was exclaiming something and Sawada-san was answering her, sounding equally worried. Yamamoto was laughing his startled-idiot laugh and, worse, holding Hayato's hair back as he retched. And Reborn was saying, "You're back earlier than we expected," while the hag was saying, "No, I told you I'd be back at six!"

His stomach seized again despite the fact that there was nothing in it but bile and acid. Hayato dug his fingers into the side of the wastebasket and rode it out as best he could, plotting how he might feed Yamamoto a stick of dynamite in exchange for the hand that was currently rubbing circles against his back.

"Text me when it's clear," the hag said; a moment later, the door clicked shut again.

Hayato stayed hunched over the wastebasket a moment longer before saying, "She gone?" Christ, what a taste in his mouth. He focused on that instead of—anything else.

"Yes, she's gone." Reborn jumped down from the low table as Hayato knocked Yamamoto's hands away and straightened up, wiping his mouth. "I see that she wasn't exaggerating about the effect she has on you."

"Yeah." Hayato did his best not to meet anyone's eyes, not Yamamoto's confused expression or Sasagawa's thoughtful one, and especially not Sawada-san's worried one. He pushed himself to his feet and picked up the wastebasket. "'Scuse me."

The door wasn't quite shut behind him before he heard Sawada-san begin to say, "The effect she has—"

Hayato closed his eyes, grimaced, and made for the bathroom to rinse his mouth out and deal with the other aftermath, cursing all the time as he did. God only knew what Reborn was going to say in his absence. Not that it mattered, not when he'd just disgraced himself about as thoroughly as it was possible to do in front of Sawada-san and Reborn without there being bullets involved.

They were probably going to have him on the next plane back to Italy. And why not? Sawada-san deserved a bodyguard who could actually do his job rather than a guy who fell apart the first time he got a look at his fellow bodyguard's face.

Hayato glared at himself in the mirror over the sink; his reflection glared back. Not that it did him any good to stall, which was the biggest pity of all.

Sasagawa and Yamamoto had cleared out while he was in the bathroom, which was just great. The two of them were already thick as thieves; Hayato was willing to lay money that they were walking home together and talking him over. God knew they already watched him like he was better than television; this ought to last them a good long time.

Sawada-san was still in her place, though, and Reborn was, too. He glanced at Hayato once, eyes cool; Hayato wished that he could just go ahead and combust from shame at how casually Reborn evaluated and dismissed him.

Sawada-san peered at him, anxious. "Oh, are you feeling better?"

God. Hayato smiled, feeling the way it stretched his cheeks tight, and pulled himself together. No point in embarrassing himself any further than he already had. "Sure thing, Sawada-san! Sorry about that."

She didn't look convinced. "Are you sure? Do you need to sit down? Can I get you anything? Do you need a doctor?"

Oh, God. Hadn't Reborn explained anything?

No, of course he hadn't. This wasn't _his_ responsibility.

Hayato took a breath. "No, Sawada-san, I'm fine now." He dropped his eyes away from her face and stooped over the table, gathering up his books and papers and stuffing them into his bag, hands working on autopilot. What was he supposed to do? He glanced at Reborn, who was about as informative as a statue.

"Are you sure?" Sawada-san fidgeted, twisting her hands together and chewing on her lip. "Are you going home? Will you be okay? Should we call your parents to come and pick you up?"

Hayato fumbled the pen he was picking up; it went spinning across the table as he looked at Sawada-san, who didn't seem to know—anything. "My parents?"

Sawada-san looked back, all earnestness until her expression changed, turned anxious. "Did I say something wrong?"

For a dizzy moment, he wavered between instinctive fury and the fact that it was Sawada-san, who surely didn't know any better, which left him hunched over the table and staring at her like an idiot. Then his survival instincts kicked in—Reborn was standing _right there_ —and he heard his own voice like it was coming from someplace far away: "I live alone, Sawada-san."

"Oh… oh!" First she flushed, then her eyes went wide. "In that case, if you're sick, you shouldn't be alone. We could, um. Make up a bed for you here?"

"No!" It came out harsher than he'd intended it to, spurred by his instinctive revulsion at the thought of spending the night under the same roof as the hag. Sawada-san flinched away from him, eyes wide, and he regretted it right away. "I mean—I'm fine. It's fine, Sawada-san, I'm all better now."

She twisted her hands together. "Are you sure?" She didn't sound like she believed him at all, all soft and uncertain.

"Yeah, I'll be fine!" He dredged up all the cheer he could manage and smiled after chasing down the last stray pen and stuffing it into his bag. "Don't worry about me, Sawada-san! I'll see you in the morning!"

She still didn't look convinced, but she let him make his escape with nothing more than that, for which Hayato gave devout thanks.

* * *

Reborn didn't say anything at all when Bianchi settled herself in her usual spot, which was as eloquent in its own way as a lengthy speech. Bianchi leaned her head back against the bole and avoided the darker shape of Reborn sitting above her, preferring to look at the roofline. "I told you very distinctly that I'd be back at six."

"How careless of me to have forgotten."

Bianchi took a deep breath and counted back from ten. Let it out and did it again. When she trusted herself to speak, she did it one more time for good measure. "That was a nasty trick." On her, on Hayato—hell, on both of them.

"The two of you were going to have to encounter each other eventually. Better to do that in controlled circumstances than not." He made it sound perfectly reasonable, too, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and ignored her snarl. "Besides, I wanted to see how bad it really was."

"Congratulations, now you know." Her brother had taken one wide-eyed look at her face and turned chalky pale before he dove for the trashcan and puked his guts up, just like he had the last time she'd tried to see him, and the time before that, and… there wasn't any reason to be surprised that nothing had changed. Not really. Time didn't really heal all wounds. "How did he explain it to Tsunako?"

"He didn't." Reborn's tone was faintly disapproving. "She didn't push, either."

"Of course she didn't." Bianchi took her eyes away from the roofline and turned them on him. "She doesn't have the first idea what to make of Hayato, you know that." Didn't know what to make of him, was intimidated by him. Same difference, really. Or amounted to the same thing in the end.

Reborn's grunt was displeased. "She accepted his loyalty. She shouldn't be fighting this at all." It was a familiar refrain at this point. Bianchi could have mouthed it along with him, had either of them been in better moods.

"It takes time, Reborn." Bianchi looked away from him. "It's going to take time." Tsunako might have stopped protesting her Family's plans for her, but that didn't mean she'd accepted them.

"Has she asked about what happened?"

For someone who had all the time in the world, Reborn was remarkably impatient at times.

"No. I don't know whether she remembers the things I told her the first time we went shooting, either, to be honest." Tsunako had spent the evening quietly, focusing on the remainder of her homework and then dutifully listening to the things Bianchi had tried to explain about the bond between a boss and his—or her—Family. She _listened_ well enough, but Bianchi was fairly certain that Tsunako had no idea what the point of what she was listening to was.

But wasn't that just the problem across the board these days?

"Hm."

Bianchi peered up at Reborn, made suspicious by the thoughtful edge to that sound. That was never a good sound when it came from Reborn. "What are you thinking about _now_?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it."

Bianchi sighed. "You will tell me before you start anything." Not a request, that, though Reborn could only be relied upon to follow orders from the Ninth. "You know I don't like surprises."

"I know." His tone was serene and not the slightest bit comforting.

Bianchi grimaced at him through the darkness and resigned herself to being extra vigilant until she'd managed to suss out the shape of whatever new scheme was brewing inside that tiny skull of his.

* * *

Hayato wanted very much to forget how thoroughly he'd contrived to embarrass himself the evening before, so of course the first thing out of Yamamoto's stupid mouth the next morning was a cheerful, "Hey, looks like you're feeling better!" Asshole even tried to sling an arm over his shoulder, too, like he thought Hayato was one of his idiot baseball friends or something.

Hayato shrugged him off, irritated. "Yeah, of course I am. Obviously."

Biting contempt was wasted on Yamamoto, who didn't seem the least bit fazed by Hayato's tone and just ambled along with him, grinning amiably. "Hah, well, that's good! You looked pretty miserable last time I saw you. I hope whatever that was isn't catching."

"It's not." Now, if only Yamamoto would take a hint about when to push a subject and when to just let it drop—

"Yeah? You sure?"

Fuck. "Yeah, I'm sure." Hayato thrust his hands into his pockets, searching for his cigarettes. He caught the flicker of distaste on Yamamoto's face as he shook one out of the pack and lit up; the first inhale tasted like a victory, however petty.

Fortunately, he and Yamamoto lived in different neighborhoods, so he didn't have to put up with Yamamoto for more than a couple of minutes before they came to the Sawada house. Sawada-san was just emerging from the front door, Reborn riding on her shoulder, and she offered them her good mornings without sounding too resigned about it. It was good that she had stopped protesting the fact that they walked her to and from school. Next he'd have to talk to her about varying the route she took every day. Predictability wasn't their friend.

Not today, though. Today he wanted as little attention as possible. If everyone would just forget yesterday's episode—

"Bianchi-san wanted me to tell you that she's sorry about yesterday," Sawada-san began as he and Yamamoto arranged themselves at her shoulders and they turned towards school. Hayato couldn't help himself; he gagged a little at the mention of his sister's name. "Gokudera, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he gritted out, willing his body back under control.

Neither she nor Yamamoto looked particularly convinced of that, but it was Reborn who said, "So even the mention of your sister's name is enough to trigger a reaction? That could be a liability."

"Half-sister," he grated out. "And it just caught me off-guard. I'm fine."

Christ, Reborn thought he was a liability. They really _were_ going to send him away.

"Wait, it's Bianchi-san who makes you get sick like that?" Yamamoto was nearly laughing. "What, really?"

"Shut the fuck up, asshole." It was easier to control the nausea by channeling it into his rage. "You'd be in the same position too, if she'd spent a couple years using you for her guinea pig."

On the downside, letting the anger take charge meant saying shit about the part of his life he'd prefer not to think about, much less talk about. Maybe the puking was better.

"What—her guinea pig?" Sawada-san sounded as confused as she looked. "What does that mean?"

Didn't look like he had much of a choice about talking now, though. Hayato checked that he was downwind of Sawada-san, lit up another cigarette, and focused on watching their surroundings. "Means what it sounds like." He took a long drag off the cigarette, letting the nicotine rush soothe some of his nerves down and the bitter taste of the smoke wash remembered tastes out of his mouth. "When her skills were just coming in, she practiced them on me."

"Her skills…?" Sawada-san ventured, sounding uncertain.

Hayato pressed his lips together around his cigarette. Didn't she _know_?

Apparently not: Reborn said, "The Poison Scorpion can transmute any organic substance, and many inorganic ones, into a variety of poisons and corrosive substances. She specializes in food."

The silence that settled on them then was peculiarly heavy. Hayato smoked furiously, relying on the cigarettes to keep his hands busy and his nerves calm, and lit the next cigarette from the butt-end of the first before Yamamoto said, very carefully, "So Bianchi-san… practiced poisoning you?"

"For two years. Till I left." Two years of that, two years of not being able to trust the food in his mouth not to betray him, two years of his father's indulgent laughter— _It'll make you stronger, boy_ —and his step-mother's thin smiles and the hag's dogged persistence. _Fuck._ Hayato exhaled a stream of smoke, nerves starting to jangle a bit from his breakfast of coffee and cigarettes. "Every time I saw her, she had something new to try out."

"And thus the psychosomatic reaction." Reborn nodded wisely from Sawada-san's shoulder. "You see her face and become ill. That's an awkward liability, to be sure."

Hayato opened his mouth to protest, but stopped himself at the look on Sawada-san's face, white and disbelieving, and forced himself to think. This wasn't about his pride, it was about protecting Sawada-san, which meant—fuck. _Fuck._

He took one last drag on his cigarette and fixed his eyes on Namimori Chuu, looming up ahead of them. "How long will it take the Ninth to send a replacement?" Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , was there anything that he couldn't manage to fuck up?

"Mm. That's a good question. I'll have to look into the answer." Reborn hopped down from Sawada-san's shoulder and jumped up to the wall that circled the school. He gave Sawada-san a severe look from that vantage point. "Do better on today's English quiz, so that you don't embarrass the Vongola." With that bit of parting instruction, he strolled off.

Not that Sawada-san seemed to have heard him. "Wait, a replacement?" She looked dazed, like there were too many things going on all at once for her to process. "I don't—"

"For me." Hayato avoided looking at Yamamoto altogether, not wanting to see the look on his face at all. Fucker would probably manage to look innocent, even though he had to have realized that he'd won. Fuck. "If I can't do my job at all times, I'm a threat to your safety. They'll need to remove me." And _remove_ was the right word; the Vongola would probably bury him in the deepest hole it could find for him now that he knew one of its major secrets. Hell, that might not have even been a metaphor. Fuck. One more thing to worry about. "So! Do you think those flashcards for English helped you study at all?"

It was a clumsy segue, but Sawada-san let it stand as they passed through the school's gates, which was really all Hayato asked.

* * *

Reborn sent word ahead like always, so Bianchi had a measure of time in which to prepare herself. If there could be any preparation. She wasn't sure there was, so she sat at the low table in Tsunako's room, methodically working her way through a pot of tea, until Tsunako herself came in. Bianchi studied her over the cup; she looked worried. And she didn't quite meet Bianchi's eyes as she said hello.

Maybe she ought to have let Tsunako bring it up herself, but Bianchi couldn't help herself. After she'd asked how Tsunako's day had gone and after how much homework Tsunako was facing, she said, "How's Hayato?"

Tsunako flinched from his name. "He's—" She stopped and gave Bianchi a pleading look. "He seemed better, but he said—Bianchi-san, you didn't really poison him, did you?"

Bianchi wrapped her fingers around the cup she held and did her best to meet Tsunako's eyes, which all but begged her to say that it wasn't true. "I did."

Tsunako sat down with a thump that Bianchi suspected that she hadn't even noticed. She looked too confused and disbelieving to be paying attention to little details like that. "You didn't—you couldn't do that, he's your brother—"

"Half-brother," Bianchi said. "I was nine and he was six when I started showing my skills. We didn't realize that was what it was at first, but Hayato is the first person I ever poisoned." And the first time _had_ been an accident, however resentful of her brother and the attention he'd been getting at the time she'd been. It wasn't much, but at least she could say that for herself. The first time had been an accident.

Not that Tsunako seemed like she would appreciate any such fine distinction. She stared at Bianchi, eyes huge in her face. "You—really did use him as a guinea pig? When he was _six_?"

Bianchi bit back the _Mother told me to_ and the _Father said it was all right_. "I was nine and jealous. He wasn't my _real_ brother, even though my father made us pretend he was, and I was jealous of him. Of all the attention he got. So yes, I practiced on him. My father said that it was good, that it was making him stronger, more resistant to poison, but the truth is that I really just wanted to hurt him. And I did. And it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what it was I had done. It was too late by then, of course. He'd already run and wouldn't have anything to do with me after that."

Tsunako stared at her, opening and closing her mouth soundlessly. "That's—that's—"

"Horrible?" Bianchi suggested. "Deeply fucked up? Barbaric?" The smile that stretched her face hurt. "I'd start with those, myself." Tsunako just looked all the more horrified. "Running away was probably the smartest thing Hayato's ever done. I know he's had a hard time getting by, but at least he got himself out of there. Did the same thing myself after my mother died." And the thing she regretted most was that it had taken her that long to realize how toxic her family really was.

Tsunako had gone white. "That's—you—" She scrambled to her feet, shaking her head, though Bianchi wasn't quite sure what she might have been denying. She stared down at Bianchi for a moment longer, then rushed out of the room.

Bianchi swore and launched herself after Tsunako, feeling ten kinds of stupid for not having realized how likely Tsunako was to retreat from such a nasty truth. She heard the front door slam, swore again, and moved faster.

Tsunako thought herself clumsy, but wasn't, not really—she got flustered easily, sure, especially when she was feeling self-conscious, and that tended to cause her to choke and fumble—but when she wasn't thinking too hard about what she was doing, she moved with as much grace as any adolescent might have. And she wasn't thinking about her clumsiness just then. Bianchi was quite sure of that, given how fast she was running. Perhaps Tsunako wasn't thinking at all, just running—not that Bianchi could quite blame her. Tsunako _was_ one of the more sensible people she'd ever met, at least when it came to the mafia. Any sane person _would_ run.

So Bianchi let her, falling into stride a few paces behind Tsunako and sticking close enough to step in if Tsunako needed her, and let her get it out of her system.

It took a long time for Tsunako to stumble to a walk, steps uneven and a hand pressed against her side. Bianchi slowed too, keeping one eye on Tsunako and the other on the streets around them. Namimori was a quiet little city, thanks to a lot of factors, but even it had its less savory side, which was where they were now. It would have been nice, she reflected, if Tsunako would have been a little more self-aware of where she was going, but—that was something they could talk about later.

Tsunako walked another half block, came to a corner bus stop with a shabby bench, and dropped herself into it, leaning over her knees and covering her face with her hands.

Bianchi glared at the punks hanging out on the sidewalk across the street until they decided that maybe they didn't want to bother Tsunako after all, and took up a position two long strides away from Tsunako's seat to wait her out.

It was a while before she lifted her face out of her hands, which was something else they were going to have to talk about, later. But for now Bianchi was more worried by the way Tsunako looked at her, like she was the last person she wanted to see, ever. "What are you doing here?"

It wasn't worth wincing at the sullen tone. "Doing my job." Bianchi lifted a shoulder, shrugging away Tsunako's glare. "I'm one of your bodyguards." Among other things, but keeping Tsunako safe was definitely her first job.

Tsunako's mouth twisted. "Did they make you my bodyguard because you're so good with poison?"

"Yeah, actually." Bianchi let her gaze wander across the storefronts, the punks lounging on the sidewalk and watching them, and the traffic passing by. "There aren't many who are better." She checked on Tsunako, who looked like she didn't know how seriously to take that. "It's one of the reasons they call me the Poison Scorpion." There were others, too, but she didn't want to go into those unless she had to. "Your father told the Ninth he wanted the best that he could get for this job." Hence Reborn. "And hell. I survived growing up with my family. I guess they figured I could teach you how to do the same with your Family."

Tsunako's face twisted, full of anger and hurt feelings and betrayal. "What, are you going to teach me how to poison people? Little kids, maybe?"

A direct hit, that. Maybe Tsunako knew more than she let on about how to hit someone where it would hurt. Bianchi breathed through her first reaction. "Not exactly."

"Good. I don't want to know how to do that." Tsunako turned away from her, wrapping her arms around herself and hunching over. "I don't want to know about anything else, either. Not the mafia or guns or hitmen or anything."

"Don't think it works that way, kiddo." Or it was way too late for that. Same difference, really. "You need to—"

"I don't care!" Tsunako practically yelled it. "I don't care what I need to know and I don't care what you're supposed to be teaching me, because I'm not going to do it! I'm not!"

So they'd finally come to it, four months in. Bianchi had been wondering how long it would take. She came closer and took a seat on the bench next to Tsunako, leaning back against it with a sigh. "Wish I could make that happen for you, kiddo. I really do."

Tsunako didn't answer her, just hunched her shoulders further and scooted to the end of the bench. Bianchi watched her do it and wondered what she ought to say next.

Well, Tsunako never had answered her question. "How is Hayato doing, anyway?"

No reply.

It wasn't like she needed Tsunako to actually like her in order to bodyguard for her, Bianchi reminded herself. Still. Couldn't deny that it hurt a little to be rejected like that. Though it wasn't like she could help what had already been done, or change the mafia to be something that it wasn't.

Maybe she needed to make that part clear.

"Let me tell you a story." No reaction to that, but then, she hadn't expected one. "It's not a nice story and almost no one comes out of it looking very good, but it's a true story. That counts for something, right?"

Tsunako didn't reply, but she hadn't stuck her fingers in her ears either, so Bianchi took a breath and began. "So, once upon a time, there was a little princess who lived with her father and mother in a lovely palace that was surrounded by gardens. Her father was a powerful man who led other powerful men to do what he wanted, and her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. The princess was very happy with her parents, but her father wasn't happy or content with what he had. That's the way it goes with powerful men. They're never really happy, no matter what they have. So even though his wife was the most beautiful woman in the world and his daughter adored him and he was powerful, he was unhappy.

"The princess' mother wasn't happy, either, because even though she was the most beautiful woman in the world, she knew that her husband didn't love her any more, if he ever had, and that made her very unhappy. She tried and tried to give her husband the one thing he wanted most in the world, convinced that it would make him love her again, but no matter what she tried, she couldn't give him a son."

Bianchi rubbed her palms over her knees, scrubbing them dry, and saw that Tsunako had lowered her shoulders a bit. So she was listening, good.

"Part of the problem was that it takes two to make a baby, and her husband didn't want to go to her bed anymore. He'd fallen in love with someone else, or thought he'd fallen in love. The new woman he'd found was almost as beautiful as his wife, and he made up his mind that he was going to have her. I don't know too much about her—you'll understand why in a little bit—but this woman, who was a musician, went along with it. Maybe she didn't know he had a wife, maybe she was in love herself and just didn't care—maybe he just had something that she thought she wanted. I don't know. But he loved her and she loved him and together they had a son. And that was when things began to turn complicated." Began, Christ. As if it had ever been simple.

Tsunako was listening, though. She'd lifted herself out of her huddle and was frowning at the street. So at least Bianchi wasn't dredging all this history up for no reason.

So she continued on. "So the man decided he wanted to put his wife aside and marry the musician, because he was so in love that he'd forgotten all the promises he'd made when he'd married his wife. But he couldn't do it. For one thing, the musician wouldn't have him. For another, his wife had been a princess in her own right before she'd married him, which made her a part of what made him so powerful. If he put her and his daughter aside, it would have made his in-laws angry. But he still loved his musician and his little son, so he came up with a plan."

Some plan.

"I don't know what the hell he was thinking, to be honest, or why he thought that it was a good idea. He was a powerful man, and arrogant because of that. Maybe that's why he thought it would work. He went to his wife and told her that since she couldn't give him a son herself, she would have to claim the musician's son for her own instead. And he took the boy from the musician and brought him home and declared that he was the son of his wife and made the boy his heir."

Tsunako stirred on the bench next to her. "That doesn't even make sense. No one would believe a story like that."

"No one had to." Bianchi knew her smile was crooked. "All they had to do was act like they did. And he was pretty powerful." She fell back into the sing-song rhythm, spinning out her family's fucked-up history like a warped fairy tale. "The people around him were willing to pretend that it was all true. His wife was very unhappy, but did what he told her to and said that the boy was hers. And the princess was too young to know any better and supposed this was how everyone got younger brothers. And the musician… well. One of the wife's conditions for agreeing to adopt the boy was that her husband had to break things off with the musician. I don't know how she managed to get them to agree to it, but they did, and so the musician drove out to the palace twice a year to see the boy who was secretly her son. Only she stopped coming after a few years, because something went wrong with her car and she drove off the road and died on her way to visit."

Tsunako sucked in a breath, the sound sharp. Bianchi waited, but she didn't say anything, so after a moment she picked up and kept on.

"Now, the princess didn't know most of this at the time. She was too young for it. All she really knew was that she loved her father and mother and that things had changed when they brought her brother home. Her father didn't pay as much attention to her as he'd used to, because he was much more interested in his son, the prince. And her mother, who had used to be the most beautiful woman in the world, changed, too, and became sad and angry all the time. The princess saw more of her mother than her father, so she followed her mother's attitudes about a lot of things. And her mother blamed the prince, and perhaps the musician, for everything that had gone wrong. It wasn't fair—the prince was just a little boy who hadn't been any part of what his parents had decided to do—but then, people aren't very fair. And the princess, who was young and spoiled and resentful of the way her family had changed, was very jealous of all the attention the prince received."

"How old were you?"

Bianchi looked at Tsunako, who'd put on a neutral expression sometime over the course of the story. "Three when they brought him home. Six when his mother died." She looked away. "I remember that Mother was particularly satisfied when we got the news, and that Father turned even more distant after that. I think he must have been genuinely fond of his mistress. I like to think that, anyway. It makes things easier if I believe that." Sort of easier, anyway. Some things didn't get any easier, no matter how she twisted and turned them inside her head.

"So your mother resented him and you copied her." Tsunako's tone was even, not quite judgmental. Yet.

"I was very young. And spoiled. And jealous." Bianchi watched the street. "He took after his mother, who was really good at the piano… he was good enough to give recitals, actually, even though he was barely out of the nursery. That just got him more attention, which made me more jealous, and around and around we went. The first time I ever poisoned him was before a recital, actually. I was so mad at him, and mad at Father, who wanted me to bake him some cookies for good luck…" She could still remember the texture of the dough between her palms as she'd shaped each cookie, how resentful she'd been. "No one had realized that I'd taken after my mother's family so strongly, not until Hayato fell apart halfway through his recital. I didn't even know it was something that the Miccoli could do, and it took me a stupidly long time to understand how badly I was hurting him every time I tried something new on him. My mother laughed it off, you see. Told me that he was playing it up for attention. And my father looked at it as… a kind of training. Hayato was going to be his heir, and thanks to me, he's resistant to a lot of toxins. Not immune, of course, but… resistant. Which isn't a bad thing for a future boss to be. So none of the people who should have stopped me did." She glanced at Tsunako. "It's not an excuse, mind you. I did it because I wanted him to be unhappy, because I was a vicious, spiteful brat. But I only wanted him to be unhappy. Not dead." It wasn't much better than the alternative, but that was the best she had to offer. "I guess I thought he deserved to be unhappy, because he'd made me and my mother unhappy. Pretty shitty, huh?"

If she'd been hoping that Tsunako would argue the point, she was bound for disappointment. "Kind of, yeah." Her voice was quiet. "So what happened after that?"

"Lots of things." Bianchi leaned back and laced her fingers together over her stomach. "When his mother died, it was all very mysterious. Her car ran right off the road over a cliff, but there were no tracks to show that she'd tried to hit the brakes before the car went over. And my father… well, he's the head of a mafia Family. He could have had that arranged, if he'd wanted to. Or my mother could have pressured him into it, or the pretty musician could have decided she want her son back, or started seeing someone else…"

Tsunako made a stifled, horrified sound. Bianchi grimaced. Wasn't doing a very good job of selling the wonders of being in the mafia, was she? "I don't think it was any of those things. I hope it wasn't, I hope it was just a terrible, tragic accident. But people talk, and Hayato always has known how to listen. He was about eight when he found out that my mother wasn't _his_ mother and that just about everyone believed that our father had had his mother killed. So he left home and changed his name and turned hitman." That was just about the only good thing she could say about that pervert Shamal—at least he'd taken Hayato in and kept him alive long enough to learn how to survive.

"When he was _eight_?"

Fortunately the disbelieving climb of Tsunako's voice was drowned out by the creaking wheeze of the bus that pulled to a stop at the curb in front of them. No one got off and Bianchi shook her head at the driver when he peered at them. He shrugged and put the bus back into motion. By the time it had groaned away, Tsunako had gotten over the worst of her shock and Bianchi had an answer for her. "Yeah, he was eight. He had a rough time of it, too, so if he's got some weird, rough edges, well, that's a big part of the reason why." She snorted, unable to help herself, and added, "And he's also just a twerp sometimes."

The joke fell flat; Tsunako eyed her, mouth pursed. "How would you even know?"

Bianchi winced, but couldn't say that she hadn't earned that. "I kept tabs on him after I left. Tried to look him up a couple of times, but he just puked on my shoes and slammed the door in my face every time I did. So that didn't work out so well. But I knew some people who'd pass word along for me."

Tsunako didn't seem convinced. "What happened to wanting him to be unhappy because you were unhappy?"

It was probably a good thing the kid was so sharp, but it wasn't particularly comfortable. "A couple of things." Bianchi stared into the memory. "My mother got sick and didn't respond to treatment, and I met Reborn. He wasn't really very nice about pulling my head out of my ass, but…" She hadn't wanted nice, or gentle, at that point. She'd just wanted someone to treat her like she was real and counted for something instead of as a nuisance to be ignored or a chip to bargain with. And Reborn had done all that and more. "He knocked some of the stupid out of me and gave me something I could do with myself, something that actually mattered, so I followed Hayato's example after Mother died and left. Because that was better than hanging around and watching my father take up with his new wife. He started courting her before Mother passed, you know." Which Tsunako hadn't known, of course, but now she did.

Bianchi dusted her hands off. "So there you have it. That's the story of how fucked up Hayato and I really are. But then, our family really worked at it. They're not all actually that bad, I promise." And please, let the kid not ask her where the Vongola fell on the fucked-up-Family continuum.

Tsunako didn't have anything to say right away. When Bianchi checked on her, she was hunched in on herself again, looking sick as she stared at the pavement beneath her feet. Bianchi let her be; if she needed some time to process all that, who could blame her? There was plenty there to chew on.

When Tsunako finally broke her silence, her voice was quiet. "That's a really awful story, Bianchi-san." She was still studying the pavement. "Really, just—awful."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not real proud of it." Though she was rather proud of Tsunako for not automatically taking one side or the other, especially when she wasn't all that fond of Hayato. It was the kind of evenhandedness that was going to serve her well one of these days. "Dunno what changes Hayato would make to it, but I bet he'll have a few, if you ask him." If she could get him to tell her about it. Maybe she could; Reborn said Hayato was devoted to her.

"Maybe." Tsunako sounded like she had her doubts on whether she'd be able to get him to talk. "I don't know if I'll have a chance before he leaves."

Bianchi found herself sitting bolt upright before she quite knew what she was doing. "Leaves?" The fuck. "What do you mean, before he leaves?" He couldn't be leaving; Reborn would have said something.

Tsunako looked at her, confused. "He said he'd need to be replaced since he was, um. A threat to my safety. Because he wasn't able to do his job at all times." She stopped, worrying at her lower lip, and added, "Did I say something wrong?"

"They can't replace him," Bianchi said through the haze of blank shock that gripped her (Reborn would have been pissed to see her caught so flatfooted). "Did Reborn say anything about this?" Surely he hadn't, surely this was just Hayato jumping to some wacky conclusion—

"He said that he wasn't sure how long a replacement would take—eek!" Tsunako squeaked and jumped when Bianchi slammed her fist against the bench. "Bianchi-san!"

"You don't understand, if they replace him…" Bianchi slammed her fist down again, using the ache in her hand to focus her thoughts. "Tsunako, you're the single most important secret the Vongola has right now. I know you don't like it, but you are, and Hayato's not—he's a freelancer, not part of the Vongola. If he leaves Japan before the Ninth is good and ready to tell the world about you, the Vongola will have to make sure he doesn't tell anyone about you." And they _would_ , too. The Ninth might regret it, but Tsunako was nearly his last chance of holding the Vongola together, and Hayato was only a freelancer whom barely anyone cared about. "Christ fucking Jesus, I was the one who got him this job, it'll be all my fault—"

Tsunako cut through her incipient panic attack by saying, voice small, "What do you mean, make sure he doesn't tell anyone?"

"I mean what it sounds like," Bianchi said, running a hand over her face. "They'll kill him if they think it's necessary." Which was the worst part, because it wouldn't be, because Hayato had sworn to protect Tsunako with his life and would carve his own tongue out before saying a word that could bring harm down on her—"Reborn. I need to talk to Reborn." There was a chance that Tsunako had misunderstood something, or that she could wrap her fingers around Reborn and squeeze the truth out of him, or shake him till he changed his mind—yeah, she had to talk to Reborn before things got out of hand. "Tsunako, please, can we go home? Right now? Please?"

Tsunako was staring at her, wide-eyed and shocked, but the request shook her free of that. "Yes, of course, let's go." She stood and set off at a brisk pace. Bianchi followed after her, grateful for that in the corner of her mind not currently racing to make plans and contingencies—what if she vouched for Hayato herself, would her word carry enough weight? Could she invoke the Falco, would the Ninth believe her if she said their father would be pissed? What if she—

"So you really do care about him."

That threw Bianchi out of the frenetic whirl of her thoughts. "What?" She blinked, trying to make sense of the question—oh. "Of course I do. He's my brother. He's family." Maybe Tsunako didn't understand that, despite everything she'd tried to teach the girl. "Sometimes I hated him for messing up my family, but I always knew he was my brother. Family takes care of each other, is the thing. No matter what. If someone threatens your family, you don't stop till that threat is ended, no matter how much you dislike the person who was threatened. And I don't even dislike Hayato." She was babbling, too, so she might as well make it useful. "That's why they're called Families, you see. Because a Family takes care of its own. That's why people band together and why it's so hard to be a freelancer, because if you're not part of a Family, you're—fair game. Not worth anyone's time or respect." She looked at Tsunako to see whether she was grasping this and saw that her eyes were wide. Solemn. "You're Vongola. Part of the biggest, baddest Family of all. And they would see Hayato leaving as a threat. Even if he's not, not really. Because he's not Vongola. He's not Family."

"Oh." Tsunako's voice was almost too quiet to hear. Bianchi saw her throat move as she swallowed. "Should we run, maybe?"

Bianchi exhaled. "Yeah," she said. "Let's."

* * *

There was nothing Hayato wanted less than to _talk_ with anyone about things—the hag, his so-called family, his apparent inability to do his own job—which of course meant that Yamamoto and Sasagawa spent all day watching him like a pair of cats might watch a mouse hole. (Which, what the fuck, it wasn't like Sasagawa had even been there to hear their conversation on the walk to school. Did she have some kind of creepy radar or telepathy or something?) And Sasagawa joined them for the walk home after school, even though Sawada-san hadn't said anything at all about having them over for another homework session.

None of them said anything, though, not until they'd seen Sawada-san to her front door, had watched her trudge up the walk and get safely inside. Hayato turned away as the door closed on her bowed shoulders and tried to escape.

He got three steps down the sidewalk before Sasagawa said, "Gokudera-kun, I don't suppose you have a few minutes?"

Neither of them could see his face, so Hayato permitted himself a moment to grimace before facing them. Sasagawa was smiling the way she always seemed to be doing, all sweetness and light, but Yamamoto wasn't, not really. It would have been a refreshing change on any other occasion. Hayato eyed them both and finally said, "Do I really have a choice?"

"Of course you do, but don't you think you ought to talk with us?" Which meant that he didn't, really, not when Sasagawa was looking so determined and Yamamoto was hanging back, letting her take the lead but looking like he'd back her all the way. (It was interesting, sort of, that Yamamoto was willing to play support to Sasagawa's lead, and would have been worth knowing any other time, but—did it even matter, at this point? Hayato was finding it hard to care.)

"I don't really think there's anything to talk about." He pivoted on his heel and started walking.

Not that it could ever be that easy. Three more steps and Sasagawa was walking at his elbow, matching her demure pace to his longer strides, while Yamamoto settled in at his other elbow. "Maybe not from your perspective," she said, sweetly relentless. "But think about it from our point of view. This mafia game is still all new to us. Tsunako-chan is probably asking—" an infinitesimal pause "—your sister all kinds of questions right now, but Yamamoto-kun and I are just in the dark."

"Hahah, yeah, that's right." Yamamoto's chuckle was light and obnoxious. "We don't really understand what's going on."

"I fail to see how that's anything out of the ordinary for you," Hayato told him, etching each word with as much acid as he could. "Are you sure you want to change the status quo that radically?"

"Gokudera-kun, stop picking fights with Yamamoto-kun." Sasagawa scolded as gently as a nursery-school teacher, all sweetness and steel. "It's not very productive and I don't think it's going to make you feel better."

"Shows what you know." They came to the corner where he normally turned. He hesitated a moment, decided there was no way he was going to risk the two of them following him home—he had no doubt that they'd walk right in his front door if they felt like it—and kept going.

"I don't really think you'd enjoy it as much as you normally do." Sasagawa looked thoughtful when he stole a glance at her. "Your heart's not really in it, so what's the point in screaming at him when all you're trying to do is distract us? Nobody will have any fun, and besides, it's not like we're going to let you get away with it."

Hayato nearly tripped over his own feet because he was gaping at her (and hating Yamamoto for that gurgling snicker). "Okay, seriously, one, it's fucking creepy when you say shit like that," he declared, fumbling for his cigarettes and his dignity. "And two, I don't want to fucking talk about it. Okay?"

He took a drag off his cigarette and managed a few peaceful seconds before Yamamoto said, slow and thoughtful, "So you'd really rather not talk about it, even though it's part of the mafia game and we should know about it—for Sawada-chan's sake, if nothing else?"

There was a part of Hayato that had to admire the move, even when it was making him see red, because it was just that well done. That didn't keep him from snarling, though. "Would you stop calling it a game?" he yelled, gesturing broadly enough that Yamamoto had to duck out of the way of his swinging hand. "It's not a game! Nothing about this is a _game_ , don't you get it? This is my _life_ we're talking about! And Sawada-san's life! This is for real, you moron, so stop treating it like it's all one big joke, because it's _not_."

Both of them were staring at him by the time he finished—so were all the other people walking down the street—but Hayato didn't care. Yamamoto might have won, the Vongola might be about to pull him out of Namimori to put a bullet in his head, but at least he'd managed to get that off his chest first.

"You know," Sasagawa said after a moment, "we really ought to have made sure to have gotten you to one of Namimori's baseball games before now." And what baseball had to do with anything was patently unclear. Before Hayato could point out that she'd lost her mind, she clapped her hands together. "Oh, look! A park! We can talk there."

"I don't want to talk, damn it."

Not that either of them paid one bit of attention to his protest, or that they showed the least compunction in strong-arming him across the street to install him on a kiddy-sized swing. Hayato growled at them both, his knees practically level with his chin, as Sasagawa claimed the other swing and Yamamoto leaned against the frame, looking all cooler-than-thou about it. (It wasn't fair; Yamamoto was the human equivalent of a golden retriever—a _dumb_ golden retriever—so how could he pull shit like that off so easily?)

Hayato glared at them both and smoked in silence, because damned if he was going to make this easy for either of them. Wasn't his fault that neither of them could take a fucking hint when it was handed over on a silver platter.

Kyouko pushed herself back and forth, swinging gently, while an assortment of small children shrieked on the other side of the playground, racing around a merry-go-round. After a few minutes, she finally said, "I don't believe I have the full story yet. Would you tell me what things between you and your sister are like so I can understand?"

"She's not my sister." Hayato dropped the butt of his cigarette in the sand beneath him, grinding it out and ignoring the disapproving click of Yamamoto's tongue. "She's my half-sister." They were going to get that straight, God help him, if it was the last thing he ever did. "I wish you people would get that right."

"Your half-sister, then." Kyouko rocked back and forth, an erratic pendulum. "I know you'd rather not talk about it, but we really do need to understand. How can we do anything to help if we don't know what's going on?"

Hayato snorted in spite of himself. "Help? Christ, what do you think you can do to help? You don't—you're not—fuck it. You treat this all like it's a fucking game, for chrissakes. You're not going to be able to help."

"Definitely a baseball game, and soon," Kyouko murmured, smiling. "We'll bring Tsunako-chan along just to make sure you don't have any excuse to skip."

"Would you shut up about baseball already?" Hayato leaned his head against the chain of the swing, tired of their stupidity and their fucking clueless innocence. They wanted to know about the mafia game? Fine, he'd tell them enough to make 'em choke. "There's not going to be any fucking baseball games, not for me. I'm going to be dead just as soon as they find someone else to send out here, you idiots."

At least _that_ shut them up. Hayato pulled out his cigarettes again, shaking one out and lighting it up, and let himself enjoy the full minute of silence that greeted that announcement. Thought about raising his eyebrows and asking them how they liked the mafia game _now_ , but didn't bother. The sick, stunned look on their faces—both their faces, because even Sasagawa hadn't managed to find a way to smile at that—said it all. But what had they fucking expected, anyway? It was the fucking mafia, not a preschool sing-along. They hadn't sent Sawada-san bodyguards because they were just joking around or thought she needed the company.

He was most of the way through his cigarette before Yamamoto said, "You're not joking, are you?" His face had gone pale and his tan gave him a sickly sort of color. "You really think they're going to kill you."

So much for listening comprehension. Hayato exhaled a stream of smoke. "No, I don't _think_ it. I know it." He looked from Yamamoto to Sasagawa, who was only just beginning to throw off her shock and whose eyes stood out huge and dark against how white her face was. "You two don't get it, do you? Sawada-san is just that important. The Vongola have to keep her safe, no matter what." He took the last drag off his cigarette and dropped it, stubbing it out with his toe. "They need her too much to take any risks with her safety." Which made him wonder a little about some of the things Reborn did, but—not his business, was it? Not really. Not for very much longer.

"But you're—how could you be a risk to Tsunako-chan?" Sasagawa sounded as bewildered as she looked. Hayato supposed he shouldn't have been as satisfied by that as he secretly was. "Just because you throw up sometimes—"

"Not sometimes," Hayato corrected her. "Every time I see the hag. Or someone mentions her name before I can brace myself." He considered another cigarette, but there were only a couple left in the pack—Christ, how'd that happened? "And who else is working this job? Oh yeah, the hag."

"But you've both been here together for months!" Yamamoto protested. "There haven't been any problems so far, other than last night—"

The hell with it. He'd pick up another pack once he'd ditched the two of them, or something. Hayato drew the next-to-last cigarette out of the pack and made a face at Yamamoto to cut him off. "Just how long do you think we can go without crossing paths, anyway?" The click and rasp of the lighter was soothing, and so was the first lungful of smoke. "What happens when the Cetrulli, God forbid, find out that there's a Vongola heir they haven't killed yet and send someone out here to correct that oversight? I see the hag and that's it, I'm done, I'm too busy puking my guts up to do my job, which is, oh yeah, keeping Sawada-san alive and safe." He shook his head. "I'm too much of a liability. She needs someone who can actually do his job."

"So they need to send in a substitute." Yamamoto's color was improving as he got into the argument. "Okay, fine, whatever, I guess that makes sense, but that doesn't mean that they'll kill you!"

"Actually, incompetence is a perfectly good reason to shoot someone." Hayato just felt like putting that out there, especially if Yamamoto was going to call himself Sawada-san's bodyguard. It ought to put him on his game. "You should see the way the Barassi go through their people. And even so, they still can't do anything right." He took a drag off his cigarette. "But that's not why they're going to shoot me. It's because I know about Sawada-san." He'd stood on the carpet in front of the Ninth's desk, listening to the man explain that before the Vongola could tell him about the job they had for him, he had to swear on his life that he would not tell anyone what he was about to hear. He'd had a moment's misgivings, then, but had promised. And now, here they were. "It's the only way to be sure I won't let something slip to the wrong person." Which, in retrospect, he'd done pretty much on the first day, with Yamamoto. Fuck, it was amazing they'd let him live after that. Reborn must have been feeling generous.

"You wouldn't do that." Sasagawa's quiet tones were all solid conviction. "You'd die before you'd do anything that would harm Tsunako-chan."

Hayato laughed; he couldn't help himself. "Well, _yeah_ , actually. That's my point." He smiled, perfectly aware that they wouldn't appreciate the beautiful irony of it all. "I swore myself to her, didn't I? My life for hers. And trust me on this, if the wrong person finds out about Sawada-san, it'll mean her life."

Yamamoto looked like something had just hit him. Hayato exhaled a stream of smoke at him and grinned; it was about time that idiot understood what the oaths he'd sworn so blithely actually _meant_.

Sasagawa took a breath. "So, you're a liability because of your reaction to your sister's face, which means you need to be replaced. And because you're going to be replaced, they will kill you to be sure that you stay silent. Do I have that right?"

Sounded about right to him; Hayato grunted as much, smoking the last of his cigarette slowly. She nodded; somewhere in there she'd stopped looking so stunned and now looked more determined than anything else. He had to wonder what she thought she was going to come up with. She'd stopped swinging herself back and forth while he'd explained what was going to happen; now she pushed herself back into motion. "If the problem is that you're a liability, then that just means we need to find a way to keep you from _being_ a liability."

Yamamoto straightened up out of his slouch, something that looked like relief sweeping over his face. "Hey, yeah, that could work, right? If you don't puke when you see Bianchi-san, then—sorry!"

Hayato, too busy gagging to reply any other way, flipped him off.

After a moment, Yamamoto cleared his throat. "Anyway, if you could just—learn how not to do that, then there wouldn't be any reason for them to—do any of those things. Right?"

"Don't make it sound like it's that easy, asshole," Hayato gritted out. "Because it's not." As if he could just _decide_ not to react automatically to the sight of the hag's face when that had been his only defense mechanism for so long.

"Mm, it might not be _easy_ ," Sasagawa allowed. "But surely it would be worth it—and wouldn't it be good to be able to be in the same room as your half-sister without having that reaction?"

"Why in the hell would I _want_ to be in the same room as her?" Hayato, revolted by the thought, demanded. "I don't want to go anywhere _near_ the hag."

He realized, much to late, that that had been the wrong way to approach it. Sasagawa's eyes went sharp. "Really," she said. "You would honestly rather let yourself be killed than face her? For pity's sake, _why_?"

Girls like Sasagawa always got their ways sooner or later. He'd been an idiot to have forgotten that. And what Sasagawa had wanted was to know what was at the heart of his problems with the hag. Shit. Hayato glared at her; she gave him a narrow-eyed stare back, clearly unimpressed. Well. Fuck it. Hayato scuffed his feet through the sand beneath his swing, setting himself in motion. "I don't see why I ought to give her any more free shots at poisoning me. She wants me dead, she can fucking well work for it."

Hah. He'd thought Sasagawa wouldn't like that. He smiled, well, showed his teeth, at the look on her face. She'd _asked_.

Yamamoto cleared his throat again. When Hayato glanced his way, he said, diffident, "Are you really sure that she actually wants to kill you now?" He raised his hands hurriedly when Hayato snarled. "I mean, it's just—yesterday, when you were being sick, she didn't look like someone who wanted you dead, is the thing."

"Because you have so much expertise in knowing what that looks like." Hayato rolled his eyes. "Use your brain, dumbass. She's a hitman. People see what she wants them to see."

"That may be," Sasagawa cut in. "Just when was the last time she tried to kill you, though?"

Hayato drew a breath, thinking back. "A couple of days before I left, I guess." He'd been trying to hide from her and the cupcake she'd been carrying, which was how he'd come to be in the linen closet when a gaggle of the staff had come by, shaking their heads and explaining things to the new girl. _Yeah, that's the boss' kid… no, why should he care, the boy's his bastard, he had his mother killed, didn't you know?_ And his world had come apart, even as it had made sense for the first time ever.

Movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention—Yamamoto mouthing an exaggerated _He was eight_.

Sasagawa made a quiet sound, one Hayato wasn't quite sure how to decipher. She looked—pained, perhaps. Wasn't as tough as she thought she was after all, was she? Or maybe not as okay with the mafia as she'd thought she was. Hayato smiled, knowing there wasn't much humor in it, because what had she thought—that he was joking, maybe?

Maybe smirking at her had been the wrong thing to do, thought, because she drew herself a little straighter and firmed up her mouth. "And she hasn't tried to since then?"

Oh, for—Hayato's eyes ached with how hard he had to roll them. "If the next thing out of your mouth has anything to do with how she's not that kind of person any more or how long six years is, I swear to God that you will _not_ like what I do next." God save him from idealists and people who'd never had to deal with the real world. Sasagawa and Yamamoto were just—young. So fucking young. And that was the whole problem.

Sasagawa closed her mouth, frowning, before she shook her head. "How can you be so sure without asking her about it?"

"If it really has been six years, you could at least try, right?" Yamamoto chimed in, all helpfulness. "Wouldn't it at least be good to try? I mean… Reborn wouldn't actually let her do it, right?"

Neither of them looked like they understood why Hayato was laughing. Of course, they probably still thought Reborn was _nice_. Or something. Hayato shook his head, because what else could a person do in the face of that kind of naïveté? "Who do you even think taught her how to use her poison skills? Christ."

Sasagawa shook her head, too. "Never mind Reborn," she said. "Tsunako-chan wouldn't let it happen."

Hayato blinked at that. "What?"

"Hey, yeah, that's right." Yamamoto was practically _sparkling_. "Sawada-chan won't—she won't let her do anything, and I bet she won't let the Ninth do anything either… I mean, it's Sawada-chan, right?"

The thing about hope was that it _hurt_ , both when it blossomed as suddenly as a cactus after a rainfall and when Hayato crushed it again. He'd sworn himself to Sawada-san and was willing to kill or die for her, but sheer pragmatism forced him to acknowledge, privately, that as much as he—respected—her, unless Reborn had just shot her with a Dying Will bullet, she wasn't very fearsome. Sawada-san was very _nice_ and she'd probably protest—probably; she was pretty fond of the hag—but expecting her to—to—for _his_ sake was too much.

He opened his mouth to tell them as much and stopped. They both looked dreadfully earnest, absolutely convinced that this was a solution, that Sawada-san would be able to make it all be okay. They wanted it to be okay. He didn't have to be the one to dispel that particular delusion. He _could_ , but… what was the point? They'd figure it out soon enough. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe she will. I still don't want to deal with the hag."

Sasagawa pressed her lips together very tightly. Hayato eyed her, distrusting that expression on instinct. Finally, she said, "You're being selfish."

"The hell you say!" He glared at her, offended. "How the fuck am I being _selfish_?" Considering the circumstances, he thought he was being rather practical and—selfless—about the fact that he was going to end up _dead_ over this, one way or another.

"Because you've already written yourself off and you haven't even _thought_ about how the rest of us are going to feel about it." Sasagawa met his eyes, perfectly level, as she laid that out. "Has it occurred to you to think about how Tsunako-chan would feel knowing that the Ninth had you killed just to keep her a secret? Don't you realize how much that would hurt her? Do you think she would ever forgive herself for that? You're selfish, Gokudera Hayato. Terribly selfish."

He was gaping at her; he knew that he was gaping and couldn't help himself, because—the fuck. The fucking fuck.

"Sawada-chan isn't the only one." Yamamoto sounded more serious than Hayato would have imagined was possible. "What about us? Are we your friends or not?"

Hayato stared at him, full of disbelief. Were they—but—what, really?

Turned out he'd said the last out loud or something, or maybe they could read it off his face, who knew, because Sasagawa said, quietly, "We _are_ your friends, you know."

"Yeah." Yamamoto shuffled his feet, rocking back on his heels. "What did you think we were?"

"Sawada-san's friends." He tried not to harbor many self-delusions, and it was pretty clear that Sawada-san liked both of them a lot more than she did him. But that was okay. He was supposed to be her bodyguard, not her buddy.

They exchanged looks with each other, the kind that made Hayato want to grind his teeth at how sympathetic they were. He didn't need to be fucking _pitied_ , Christ.

It was Yamamoto who said, "You're our friend. And Sawada-chan's friend, too."

Which was all warm and fuzzy, but didn't mean much. Friends weren't Family, but that wasn't his job to teach them, either. So fuck it. Let them figure it out on their own.

"You're our friend and we're not going to let you just—give up." Sasagawa drew herself up on her swing, and Hayato was reminded that she was the kind of girl who always got her way. God help him. "There has to be a way you and your sister—"

"Half-sister."

"—You and your half-sister can work together, since you've already managed it for this long. And there has to be some way you can get over your reaction. Yamamoto-kun said it was a psychosomatic reaction? You don't react when we call her your sister—just when we say her name." Sasagawa nodded, like she was pleased with that. "I expect that means you could learn not to be nauseated by seeing her."

"And maybe pigs will learn to fly," Hayato retorted.

Not that Sasagawa seemed to be put off by his resistance. "And if you can get past that, then you'll be able to be even more effective as Tsunako-chan's bodyguard, and no one will have to be killed, and Tsunako-chan won't have to be upset." She nodded and propelled herself to her feet. "I think we had better go see Tsunako-chan right now, before we waste any more time."

"I think you're right," Yamamoto agreed, over Hayato's, "Wait, I didn't agree to this!" He glared at them both, much good that it did him. They both seemed to have made up their minds and seemed to have decided that he _would_ go along with that. Yamamoto looked down at him expectantly.

Hayato considered winding his hands around the chains supporting his kiddy swing up and defying them to move him from his chosen ground, took the measure of how set Yamamoto's jaw was, and decided that there were better battles to fight.

"I hate you both," he said, hauling himself to his feet. "Just so you know."

"At least you're alive to hate us," Sasagawa said, tart as lemon. "Come on."

They'd done their best to instill manners in him when he was little, things like how to treat girls and shit, but Hayato felt that it was entirely worth ignoring all that training to flip her off, too. One was polite to nice girls; Sasagawa Kyouko was many things, but he was pretty sure that _nice_ wasn't one of them.

She just rolled her eyes at him. "Come _on_ ," she said again.

The walk back to Sawada-san's house was as good a reason as any to smoke his last cigarette. Hayato smoked it in silence, in no mood to talk to either of them, and let them exchange trivialities across him.

Sawada Nana seemed surprised when they turned up on her doorstep. "Oh, are you here for Tsunako?" she fluttered. "I'm afraid she's gone out—"

"They can wait for her to come back." That was Reborn, proving once again that he was simply the best by appearing out of thin air (more or less). "There are things they need to discuss with Tsunako."

"Oh!" Sawada-san's mother fluttered a bit more and stood back, out of their way. "Come in, then, and why don't you all go on up to here room? I'll give her a call and tell her to come home right away, and fix you all a tray—"

Hayato tuned her nattering out as he slipped his shoes off and exchanged them for house slippers instead. Sasagawa was giving Reborn a considering look, but he walked away before she could make up her mind to do whatever it is she was thinking about doing.

"Where did he come from?" she asked, voice pitched low, as they walked upstairs to Sawada-san's room.

"It's Reborn." Hayato shrugged at her. "Maybe he was shadowing us." Had sounded that way, anyway.

She looked disturbed by that; well, if she honestly meant it when she insisted she was going to be part of this, then she needed to get used to such things.

Hayato dismissed that, settled himself at the low table at the center of Sawada-san's bedroom, made sure the wastebasket was in easy lunging distance in case the hag decided to put in an appearance, and composed himself to wait.

* * *

"Oh, Tsunako!" Nana called when they came in, Tsunako all out of breath, "good, I was just about to call you—your friends are upstairs."

That was strange, but there were some extra pairs of shoes sitting in the entryway, sure enough. Maybe Reborn had rounded Kyouko and Yamamoto up, which was unexpected—but wait, there were _three_ pairs of shoes, which mean, _fuck_ , Hayato was up there. Fuck, what was Reborn up to _now_? She looked up from them to where Nana had come to greet them. "Is Reborn here?"

"He was." Nana spread her hands. "I don't know whether he's still here." Her tone was resigned, since life with Reborn was filled with such uncertainties. Normally it wasn't a problem, but—

Bianchi dug into her pocket for her phone and texted him a terse _we need to talk right fucking now_ before nodding to the stairs. "Go on up and see what's going on. I'll stay in the hall." At least until she got ahold of Reborn and could shake him.

Tsunako nodded and dashed up the stairs. Bianchi followed at a more sedate pace and was careful not to step in front of the open doorway.

A welter of voices rose up as Tsunako went in—Kyouko and Yamamoto, both of them talking at the same time. Bianchi listened closely, picking out the fragments of what they were—ah. They were all worried about the same thing. Interesting. She had to wonder how the two of them had gotten that much information out of Hayato, when he tended to be pretty close-mouthed. Tsunako was talking just as fast as they were, trying to get the straight of the story, but the one voice she didn't hear was Hayato's.

"You should go in." Reborn, from down around her knees. When she looked, he had a faint smile on his face. "This is going to be an interesting conversation."

"Oh, there's going to be an interesting conversation, all right," Bianchi muttered to him. "What the _fuck_ , Reborn? What the fucking fuck is _wrong_ with you? If you think for one _second_ that I am going to stand by and let you write my little brother off, you little bastard, I swear to God that I will end you, Arcobaleno or not!" Well, it had started off as a mutter. By the time she got to the end of it, she was shouting, enraged as much by the placid expression on his face as the threat to her brother. "I mean that, Reborn. You harm one _hair_ on Hayato's head and I will fucking _destroy you_ , you got that?"

"So I was thinking that perhaps you could try a mask," Reborn said, as if she hadn't said a word. He produced Leon, who helpfully transformed into a green half-mask, and brandished the results at her. "Here, try this."

"You are the most hateful creature in existence," Bianchi told him. "I hope you know that."

He continued to hold Leon out to her, implacable and smiling just a bit, clearly more amused that anything else.

"This is not over yet," she promised him, taking Leon and fitting him over her face. As he shaped himself to fit her features, molding himself over her forehead and cheekbones, she realized that the kids had gone silent.

That didn't sound promising.

Bianchi gave Reborn one last glare and stepped into the room to see what the kids were going to have to say for themselves. Tsunako was staring, her eyes wide and surprised. Kyouko looked very thoughtful; Yamamoto was grinning. And Hayato was—gripping a wastebasket, holding it close by, but he wasn't puking or more than a little bit green, which gave her the first chance to get a good look at him without the aid of a set of binoculars that she'd had in years. He was too thin, all the angles of his face cut too fine, so that his eyes stood out too large in his face. He looked a lot like his mother, actually—straighter hair than she'd had, and no trace of the softness Bianchi recalled in her, but maybe part of that was how suspiciously he was glaring at her. Not that she could even pretend to be surprised by that.

Bianchi inclined her head to him. "Hello, Hayato." She moved a step closer to the table. He tensed and she stopped in her tracks, being sure to hold her hands at her sides, open and palms out. "Tsunako, do you mind if I sit on your bed?" she asked, not taking her eyes off her brother.

"Um… no, go ahead." Tsunako gestured to it as she joined the other three sitting at the table.

"Thanks." Bianchi sidled over and took a seat on the edge, careful to keep her movements slow and deliberate, watching Hayato all the while.

Reborn strolled in and looked them over. "So the mask works," he noted. "That's interesting."

"It helps." Hayato's voice was taut and he was sweating; perhaps some of that tension came of fighting down nausea. "Some."

"Ah." Reborn pursed his lips. "Pity."

It must have been the tone of dismissal that prompted the explosion that followed, Tsunako and Kyouko both speaking up at once, pretty much on the same theme. Tsunako said, "Reborn, is it _true_ that they'll kill Gokudera if he leaves?" while Kyouko said, calm and distinct, "Killing Gokudera-kun without even trying to find an alternative is appallingly wasteful. What _are_ you people thinking?"

"The safety of the Ninth's heir takes precedence over the life of a freelance bodyguard," Reborn said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "Both the Poison Scorpion and the Smoking Bomb knew that when they took this job. Expecting anything else is foolishness."

"But this is a _stupid_ reason for anyone to die!" Kyouko protested, while Tsunako went white at the confirmation. "It's not—he does his job all the rest of the time, it's not—"

"The Vongola must take care of itself first and foremost," Reborn said, implacable about it. Bianchi _knew_ that, she understood that, and still she couldn't stop herself from growling at the implications anyway. Even if the Vongola _did_ need to be sure that is people were safe, this was her brother…! "The lives of freelance hitmen come after that." Reborn reflected on that for a moment. "Usually much after that, of course."

"But—" Kyouko began.

Before she could finish that, Yamamoto said, quietly, "But he swore himself to Sawada-chan's service, didn't he?"

Everyone turned to look at him, even Hayato, who forgot to glare about it, too. Yamamoto looked back, not quite managing to look as guileless as he probably thought he did. "Doesn't that make him part of the Vongola?"

And Tsunako, bless her heart, _had_ been listening all those evenings that Bianchi-san had spent spinning out stories to explain mafia lore to her, because her spine straightened then, just a bit. "He did."

Reborn glanced her way, wearing one of his most inscrutable expressions, the kind he adopted when he was evaluating some new wrinkle in a mission in order to decide whether it was a threat. "Does that mean you're going to claim him as Family?"

The question hung in the air for a moment; Hayato seemed to be frozen in place, his eyes huge in his face. Tsunako was still, too, like she didn't know how to answer that question. Maybe she was thinking of the things Bianchi had just told her about Family and what it meant. Then her mouth firmed and her chin came up. "Yes, I am. So I don't want to hear anything more about sending him away or—or—I don't want to hear it. If the mask helps, other things will, too."

She said it without hesitation, as firmly as any boss' heir who'd grown up in the heart of his—or her—Family, and Bianchi drew a breath, the sharpness of it cutting her throat. Hayato's eyes were wide, full of disbelief and wonder—why shouldn't they be? Bianchi knew perfectly well the kinds of things he'd been told by every other Family he'd tried to join. They'd had not-dissimilar things to say to her, on the rare occasions she'd considered it herself.

Reborn looked Tsunako up and down, weighing her. "Are you sure?"

Tsunako didn't even blink. "Yes. No one is going to die to keep me safe. I don't want that."

Reborn pursed his lips; Hayato was scarcely breathing. Then Reborn said, "If that's your Will, I suppose it can't be helped." He turned that tiny implacable expression on Hayato. "In that case, you will need to find some way of handling your reactions to your sister."

Hayato opened his mouth, something going to war with the wonder on his face, chilling it. "I…" He swallowed, throat bobbing. "But…" He glanced at her, his eyes flickering over her face and then sliding away.

"You can find a way." Tsunako's voice practically throbbed with sincerity. If Bianchi hadn't known better, she'd have sworn the kid was on the verge of calling her Flame. "Can't you?"

Hayato opened his mouth, staring at Tsunako with something like veneration on his face. It set a tiny alarm off in the back of Bianchi's head to see him looking at Tsunako like that as he struggled with himself. After a moment, Tsunako or whatever it was she represented to him won out, because he bent his head and said, quietly, "If that's what you want, Sawada-san."

They all seemed to exhale at once, except Reborn, who merely looked satisfied.

* * *

Sasagawa and Yamamoto were going to be fucking unbearable. Hayato could already see that looming up ahead of him and wasn't much looking forward to it. He tried not to think about that too closely: that kept his stomach from clenching up over the thought. (At least he could say this much, though: Sawada-san hadn't claimed the baseball idiot as Family—she'd claimed _him_ first. _Him._ )

And he was trying hard not to think about this, either: the hag, sitting down across from him, only a table's width away from him. She had a coffee; Hayato hadn't dared to purchase anything to eat or drink himself. (The Poison Scorpion, they said, could transmute food to poison from a hundred meters, if she felt like it.) Her face was made strange by the goggles she wore, which was earning her some funny looks from the other patrons of this little cake shop. It was enough, though—it reduced his nausea to mostly bearable levels, as long as he concentrated.

The hag curled her fingers around the cup in front of her and said, "I'm sorry, Hayato. I didn't realize what I was doing was awful until after you left, which was—stupid of me. Selfish. Cruel. You don't have to forgive me, but I did want you to know that I'm sorry for what I did. You didn't deserve that."

Hayato stared at her, not quite sure he believed what he was hearing. "Seriously?"

Bianchi raised a shoulder and dropped it. "Yeah, seriously. You're probably the only member of that family that shouldn't have been poisoned, come right down to it."

Hayato eyed her, wondering whether this was some kind of joke, but behind the lenses of her goggles, the hag's eyes were sober and serious. Huh. That was… something. He guessed. He looked away. "Whatever."

"I just thought you should know that, anyway." When he glanced back at her, she was looking down and studying her coffee. "Been wanting to tell you that for a long time." She lifted the cup and took a drink, and settled back in her seat. "So how are you doing?"

Hayato kind of thought that question was the kind that had layers to it, more than he entirely knew what to do with. So he shrugged at her. "Getting by, I guess." Better than getting by, maybe. He had a Vongola job, maybe even a Family, and a steady income and a roof over his head. And a boss who was… a boss who was amazing. "Can't complain too much."

"That's good," she said, her voice soft. "Very good. I'm glad."

The thing was, Hayato kind of thought she maybe _meant_ that. He stared at her, trying to figure out what he thought about that. Finally, he said, "Did you mean it?" It came out abrupt, harsh, but he couldn't help it. "When you were screaming at Reborn the other day, I mean." Which, Christ, talk about something that took balls. Threatening to kill the Vongola's best hitman was—no one _did_ that. At least, no one did that for him.

Even with the goggles, he could see that the question surprised her. "Of course I did. You're my brother." She paused. "And it was my idea to recommend you for this job. I wasn't—we're bodyguards, fine, freelancers, fine, but that doesn't mean we should let them just throw our lives away."

"Huh," Hayato said, because that wasn't—the composed way she said that didn't exactly match the way she'd been screaming at Reborn. But… maybe that didn't matter so much. He still remembered what she'd said and how she'd said it the first time round.

That was a strange, discomfiting thought. He didn't know what to do with it.

She shrugged again and took a sip of coffee. "So, anyway. Guess all's well that ends well."

Hayato gave her a long look, feeling the uneasiness of his stomach. "It's ended?"

She huffed. "One thing, maybe. And now something new is starting."

"Never figured you for an optimist," he said.

"Better that than the alternative." She glanced away from him, tapping a nail against the side of her cup. "Don't suppose you want to have anything while we talk?"

Hayato sucked in a breath. "—No," he said. "No, I can't."

She nodded, not quite looking at him. "Can't blame you, I guess. Maybe some other time."

"Maybe," he agreed, relieved that she wasn't going to try to push it.

They fell silent for a moment, mutually uncertain, before she said, "So tell me what you've been up to, kiddo. It's been hard keeping track of you."

The immediate, sarcastic response rose to Hayato's lips, but he choked it back down again. "Where should I begin?"

Her smile was small, but maybe genuine. "Wherever you want," Bianchi said. "Wherever you want."

* * *

Bianchi didn't say anything at all to Reborn, even after she'd taken her usual seat and settled herself comfortably. He didn't either, for several minutes, until he gave a tiny snort. "Punishing me with the silent treatment?"

"No, I just have so many things to say to you that I don't know where to begin."

"Of course." He sounded more amused than anything else, which set her teeth on edge.

"I suppose you think this is all very funny." She glared up at the place she knew him to be sitting.

"From the right perspective, everything is funny."

"Fuck you, Reborn. Seriously, _fuck you_." Perhaps it wasn't the most politic thing a girl could tell the world's greatest hitman, but Bianchi was having trouble caring about that when the little bastard was laughing at her and all the trouble he'd caused. "I hate you."

"It worked." Reborn presented that as if it were incontrovertible proof of something—his own exculpation, perhaps. "It worked."

Bianchi closed here eyes and said, carefully, "I suppose this was the only way you could see to explain how the Family works to Tsunako, then?"

"Of course not, but why waste all that effort on one lesson?" Reborn still sounded amused. "This way the Smoking Bomb learns a few things, and so does the Poison Scorpion—not to mention the boy and the girl. I begin to believe that there might be the possibility of a Family here."

Bianchi found herself rocking back against the bole of the tree, surprised, because—he sounded serious this time, like he really was thinking in terms of—that. "Fuck, Reborn."

"I _do_ hate to see a waste of potential," he mused. "Your brother might actually turn out to be worth something once we finish knocking the self-pity out of him. I hope it doesn't take as long with him as it did with you."

Bianchi shut her mouth on the first half-dozen things she wanted to say to him, more to keep herself from giving him the satisfaction than anything else. In the end she settled on a grudging, "I still hate you."

"Of course you do," he said, perfectly composed.

"I mean that."

"I don't doubt it for a second."

Bianchi scrunched herself down against the trunk, annoyed. "Stop laughing at me."

"Would I laugh at you?"

"Shit, Reborn, I know you, remember? You never stop laughing."

He just snorted again, soft. "If you say so."

Bianchi rearranged herself against the bole and changed the subject. "The Ninth going to go along with this Family thing?"

"Mm." He sounded thoughtful. "He said I might do as I like."

Bianchi found that she couldn't help herself. "Did he add, 'Because I know you're going to do it anyway' to that?"

"That part was understood." She heard the soft rustle of his shifting over her. "I think he'll approve. We want her to be strong, and it will help her if she has people to depend on."

Bianchi absorbed that. "Reborn, why does everyone worry about how strong she needs to be? How bad is it, really?"

He was silent for a long time before he said, "Bad. It's bad. I can't tell you the extent of it, but the Ninth is well within his rights to want an alternative."

Bianchi ran a hand through her hair, considering that. "What did he do?"

"I can't say."

Can't, she noted, not won't, and Reborn was always precise with his language. So there was no hope of finding out from him. "Is this going to work?"

He went silent again. "I think so," he said, finally. "I think so."

And she had to be content with that.


	4. Haru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsunako gives Haru a new pattern to think about.

Most things, Haru had noticed, made patterns with varying levels of regularity. Abe-sensei gave quizzes in science every third Tuesday, regular as clockwork, and kept firmly to that schedule regardless of holidays or the material being covered. Her mother packed her bento with an unvarying rotation of meals—leftovers on Mondays, rice and vegetables on Tuesdays, tamogoyaki on Wednesdays, hot dogs on Thursdays, and onigiri for Fridays. Haru supposed it was good that she didn't mind those repetitions. Or something.

Her father's days were as regular as her mothers: he got up early and commuted to the school where he lectured; sometimes he didn't return until late at night. Generally he was buried in student papers or his own papers, and he disliked it excessively when anyone disturbed his work. Kaasan spent her days keeping the house in order and attending her social clubs and hobbies, and Haru spent her time doing what she could to follow the pattern that had been laid down for her. She'd placed into a good middle school and took the top grades in her class on a regular basis. She was a competing member of the school's gymnastic team, and she felt sure that she was on track to get into a top-quality high school when the time came, and Todai after that for university. After that, she'd find a job teaching for a while, at least until she got married, and then it would be time to have and raise children of her own. 

Sometimes Haru wondered whether it was all right to be in middle school and already bored with life.

   
 

Haru was fond of patterns—she was the daughter of a math professor; it ran in her blood—and even more fond of the moments when those patterns failed to hold true. Her father liked to rhapsodize about the beauty that dwelt in the lines of pure math, the equations whose sinuous lines curved and snaked to elegantly simple conclusions—Haru knew he did; she'd read the reviews of his last book that had all but accused him of waxing lyrical at the expense of supporting his proofs (Maekawa-sensei had been merciless; Tousan had gone about in gloom for weeks). Tousan wasn't wrong. All that _was_ beautiful, but Haru thought that the places where the patterns broke down were beautiful, too, in their own ways. That was why she enjoyed watching people so much: they had patterns, but their patterns changed—sometimes broke apart—and there weren't equations quite sophisticated enough to predict those moments. (At least, there weren't in any of the things Haru had been able to get her hands on or make sense from. Perhaps when she was older and had taken a few more classes, and could get into the really interesting math.)

People could change, was the thing. Alter the values assigned to their variables, introduce new variables to their equations, and send the linear progressions of their lives curving off in strange new directions without warning. She wondered, sometimes, how they contrived to do it. 

Consider the girl Haru had been watching now for several months: Haru had noticed her at the same time she had started at Midori. The girl walked past Haru's house every morning at the same time; she had brown hair that flew about her face in spiky, flyaway wisps, and she wore the uniform of the local school. Haru watched her most mornings as she brushed her teeth. The girl trudged along, usually without looking from side to side, and though Haru was not particularly well versed in how people worked, if pressed, she would have said that the girl was lonely. It was a stretch when she had no data to draw on (not having actually ever spoken to the other girl), but it was a hypothesis she felt comfortable making.

Loneliness was a quality she understood.

Spring had just finished ripening into summer when the girl's pattern changed. It happened on a Tuesday morning: Haru took her mug and toothbrush to the window to watch for the other girl, but when she appeared, she wasn't alone. There was a child with her, a baby dressed in a suit, and the girl didn't look lonely. Exasperated, maybe, or somewhat freaked-out, but not lonely.

When the girl had passed down the sidewalk and turned the corner, Haru realized that she'd been so arrested by the sight that she'd dribbled foam all over her blouse and had to rush to get changed before she left for school. 

The same thing happened the next morning, the girl and the baby—he, Haru decided, based on the suit—the exasperation and the irritation. The baby didn't seem particularly interested or impressed by either emotion. He walked along the wall that lined the street, strangely independent for such a small child, and Haru watched them until they were out of sight.

She'd hardly begun hypothesizing what this meant before the girl's pattern changed yet again, and she walked by with two boys, one on either side of her. Haru stared in astonishment the first morning that happened—boys? _Two_ of them? Midori was an all-girls' school, so she didn't quite know what to make of this strange new development, or the disparity in the boys themselves. One was tall and carried an athletic bag over his shoulder with a relaxed, casual grace. The other boy slunk along, his outlandish silver hair matched by heavy rings and silver-studded ears and belts. The girl looked embarrassed by the two of them, but Haru was fascinated—how had this come about? It didn't make any sense.

The boys persisted, though—no matter that the girl looked first exasperated, then annoyed, as the days swept past, until finally she settled into something like resignation. One morning the athletic one walked by with his arm in a sling, her only company; another time he was absent and the boy with the silver hair was her only companion (and looked, Haru thought, very pleased by that fact).

And over time, the girl's entire demeanor changed, until one morning Haru watched the four of them walk past and thought _They've become friends_.

She couldn't help feeling just a bit wistful over that.

One morning they walked past, all three of them looking grim; Haru spent the day wondering what had happened and taking less thorough notes than usual as a result of that. But whatever it had been must have been easy to fix. The next day the three of them seemed to be back to normal, though Haru thought that the boy with the silver hair kept stealing glances at the girl, like he couldn't quite believe she was real.

And then, shortly after that, one morning they didn't appear at all. Nor did they appear the morning after that, or the one after _that_ —it was a full three days before Haru saw them again, and in that time she had worked her way through all the possible permutations for why that might be—sickness, unexpected school holidays, a new route to school, a transfer, a family emergency, death—and had made a good start on the statistical likelihood of each. Then they appeared again, like normal, and the next morning, before disappearing again, and Haru realized that she might have gotten the tiniest bit over-invested in people whose names she didn't even know.

It was just interesting, was the thing: the girl, the baby, the boys, and the way they all changed as she watched them. They were interesting because they didn't seem very like anyone Haru actually knew, not the girls at school or on the team, not like her parents or their friends, and it wasn't really strange if she wanted to know more about them, was it?

They had to have been varying their route deliberately, she decided after spending some time watching them and tracking the mornings when they appeared later or earlier or didn't appear at all. The pattern, if it were a pattern at all, was erratic—too erratic, as far as Haru could tell, and she wondered over it. Why so much variation? Why had the girl started going around with the boys in the first place? What had changed?

There was really only one way to find out, of course though that presented a quandary of its own, one that Haru fretted over. What if the girl and her friends turned out not to be interesting after all? What if there were a perfectly mundane explanation for the way their routes changed? (What if they didn't like her?)

Sometimes that talent of looking through all the possibilities that had made her such an asset to the gymnastics team and good in her math classes made other things absolutely impossible.

Before she had quite finished dithering over whether she actually wanted to meet the girl and her friends (and if so, how), the Midori gymnastics team went to Namimori Chuu for a tournament. It was, Haru reflected, not the sort of opportunity that came one's way every day. If nothing else, she supposed she might get a name or names to go along with the faces she'd been watching so intently.

She bided her time until the tournament was over—in Midori's favor, to no one's surprise, as NamiChuu had a reputation as being boringly average to maintain—Haru placed herself in the way of one of the NamiChuu gymnasts. "Nice match today," she said, which seemed to be a good sort of place to start things off. The girl brightened and thanked her. "I'm glad I got to come over today… maybe there's something you could help me with."

She did her best not to sound too intent and it must have worked. The girl cocked her head to the side, bird-like, and said, "Oh?"

Haru let her voice drop lower, confidential, and slipped a bit closer. "Well, I was wondering… there's a boy who I see walking to school everyday. I think he's a Namimori student, and I was wondering if I could get his name." It wasn't too weird to ask after a boy, she thought; everyone she knew seemed to talk about boys all the time.

Sure enough, the girl's eyes brightened even further. "Maybe! What does he look like?"

"Well, he's got this really fair hair… I'd call it silver, almost." The guy had to be spending a fortune bleaching it, unless it were (improbably enough) natural. Either way, it was striking enough that there couldn't be two students at NamiChuu with hair like it. "It's longer, shoulder length. Does he sound familiar?"

"Oh, you mean Gokudera-kun!"

"Gokudera," Haru repeated, tasting the name. "So he _does_ go to Namimori."

The girl nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, yeah. He transferred here a few months ago." Then her smile dimmed. "But I should warn you, he doesn't really have any time for anyone who isn't Yamamoto-kun or Sawada-chan."

Haru felt her pulse quicken. Yamamoto and Sawada. "Are those—I do see him walking with another boy and a girl a lot," she hazarded.

"Has to be them," the girl confirmed. "Yamamoto Takeshi and Sawada Tsunako. None of us know how she got both of them, either. It's just such a _waste_."

Haru dug her nails into her palms, excited. "What, really? Are you sure?" Could she get the girl to tell her more, as easily as this?

Apparently so. The girl heaved an enormous sigh. "Oh, very sure. Sawada-chan has them both wrapped around her fingers and no one knows why. She's not the prettiest girl in class, she's kind of stupid, and she's clumsy. She's so _boring_! It just doesn't make any sense."

How someone could make no sense _and_ be boring, Haru didn't know, but she didn't say anything, being rather more interested in getting the other girl to say more. "That's too bad," she began, as one of the girl's teammates drifted over and asked what they were talking about.

"She was asking about Gokudera-kun," her informant said. Her tone was wistful. "She gets to see him walking to school in the mornings."

" _Lucky_ ," the new girl sighed. "I wish _I_ got to see him every morning. He's so _cute_."

"I'd rather look at Yamamoto-kun, myself," her first informant said. "He's nicer, for one thing."

"But Gokudera-kun is so exotic!"

It sounded like an argument that was ongoing and well-rehearsed. Haru listened closely until her teammates called for her to come board the bus back to Midori, and walked away pleased with what she'd learned.

   
 

"I was right," Reborn announced with complete self-satisfaction, managing to convey an ineffable sense of _but you already knew that of course_ at the same time.

Bianchi waited for him to clarify what he happened to be claiming this time; given that she couldn't recall arguing with him on anything lately, she could afford to stay silent and wait him out. He knew it, too, because he only waited a moment to say, "We _are_ being surveilled."

On the one hand, Reborn could be sublimely blasé about the kinds of threats to make sensible bodyguards blanch. On the other, Bianchi had been hanging around him for far too long to consider herself a sensible bodyguard. She settled on raising an eyebrow and saying, "Yeah? Who?" A girl had to take her fun where she could find it, after all, especially when this was the first she'd heard of any surveillance.

Reborn clicked his tongue against his teeth. "She appears to be a student at a local academy for girls."

"Only appears?" Bianchi inquired.

"I haven't uncovered any connections to any of the Families." _Yet_ , his tone promised.

Bianchi turned that over in her head. "Do you expect to?"

"I expect to find _something_." His tone was dark. "By now there ought to be _plenty_."

Ah, so this was as much about his disapproval of the local yakuza groups as anything else. Bianchi couldn't entirely share that—if the local boys wanted to stay oblivious, that was fine by her, though she suspected that Reborn saw every day that passed without having to deal with the yakuza as a day wasted. "Perhaps. What are we going to do?"

He made a thoughtful sound. "Perhaps we ought to leave that up to Tsunako." Which really meant that he'd already made a plan of some sort to turn this into a learning experience for the kid. Well. They _were_ supposed to be teachers, after all. "Let me see what I can arrange."

"Whatever you say," Bianchi agreed.

   
 

Haru watched for the three of them for two days before she saw them walk past again—Yamamoto and Sawada and Gokudera, she repeated to herself, telling over their names with a shiver of something almost proprietary. Gokudera was saying something—declaiming it, really, waving his hands through the air with a vigor that made Yamamoto throw his head back and laugh. Sawada was watching them both.

Her pattern really had changed a lot. She was smiling at them both, amusement and fondness and wonder all mixed together. That was rather curious, Haru thought. Her informants had implied that there was something romantic there, but limited as her own observations of romance were, she still didn't see any of that in the three of them.

Another fascinating datum, that, though she hardly knew what to make of it.

And likely wouldn't, she was forced to admit when a few more days had slipped past and she'd caught a couple more glimpses of the three—one morning, a Monday, they all three moved stiffly, as if they were sore or injured, though _that_ hardly made sense. Wouldn't make sense unless she found a way to find more data.

Maybe it was like Tousan's friend from the chemistry department insisted—a person could only gather so much data through observation. Eventually, or so Nakagawa-sensei insisted, a person needed to get in there and start tinkering with things. (Tousan insisted that Nakagawa-sensei was just too far removed from the mathematics to understand, but then, that was their pet argument.)

But how was she supposed to do that with people? Haru tried to imagine it—could she just—lie in wait for the three of them and introduce herself some morning? She shuddered back from the idea. People didn't like that kind of thing, though she wasn't entirely sure why. But it made them uneasy if they knew they'd been observed, that she could pinpoint their patterns with a measure of accuracy. It was better not to let on. Yes.

Perhaps that could be her back-up plan, if she couldn't think of another one. 

The question occupied her for a few days to such an extent that she barely paid heed to Tousan's hardly-contained excitement. Some professor of mathematics was coming to town, someone important. Haru wondered how important he could actually be when she didn't remember seeing Borin-sensei's name in any of Tousan's journals, either as an author or in the citations, and Kaasan looked vaguely puzzled by Tousan's excitement too, which was an even better sign. Kaasan read over all Tousan's work to check it, so if _she_ didn't recognize this Borin-sensei's name, surely he couldn't be all that important. But it made Tousan happy, especially when his department chair picked him out to be the one to look after Borin-sensei during his visit.

Of course Tousan would be happy about that, Haru though while she was helping Kaasan clean the house. She guessed it _was_ a sign of something, no matter how much extra trouble it put them to. Kaasan to. Same difference. Maybe it would be interesting to listen to the mysterious Borin-sensei, though. Visiting academics had interesting patterns. (She still remembered Ramirez-sensei, if only because it had been so funny to watch him begin a sentence and then end up somewhere else, kilometers away from his starting point, while everyone listening to him scrambled to keep up. The best part had been how Ramirez-san had been so completely unaware of what he'd been doing in his innocent assumption that of _course_ everyone else was just as smart as he was.)

It was still probably for the best that Borin-sensei wasn't going to be staying long and that they were only going to have to host him for one evening. Haru prepared herself for the experience as much as she could by listening to her classmates to catch up on which idols she was supposed to be talking about and which shows she was supposed to be watching, and was perfectly prepared to be bubbly and cute for Borin-sensei (assuming he even noticed her at all).

She was not prepared to come downstairs when she heard Tousan come in just in time to hear Kaasan say, voice faint, "I… had expected you to be taller for some reason. Please pardon my rudeness."

"It's glandular," came the reply, shrill and grave, from somewhere around Kaasan's knees. Haru directed her gaze downwards and nearly missed the last step in her surprise, because it was Sawada's baby. He was gazing up at Kaasan, solemn and wearing a pair of glasses and a tweed jacket with tiny leather elbow patches, but Haru would have staked her life on its being the same baby. "I take no offense. Most people have a similar first reaction."

"I… of course," Kaasan said, still faint, before she rallied, just as she had when Mortensen-sensei had started drawing equations on the tablecloth and when Tousan got into one of his sulks. She smiled at Borin-sensei, smooth. "Forgive me, and welcome." She looked up and saw Haru, who was frozen on the stairs in her surprise. "Please permit me to introduce our daughter, Haru. Haru, this is Borin-sensei."

"Pleased to meet you." Haru stepped down and bowed, hoping she looked like she was surprised by Borin-sensei's height and not because she recognized him.

"Likewise," he replied, before Tousan stepped forward to sweep Borin-sensei into his study, talking all the while about how excited he was to have this opportunity to work with him.

Kaasan looked after them, a puzzled little frown on her face, before she turned to Haru. "Well! Come into the kitchen and help me get dinner on the table," she said, dismissing her confusion briskly.

"Yes, Kaasan." Haru followed her, wondering what on _earth_ was going on and what pattern it was going to end up making.

It didn't make sense, she decided. That Sawada's baby friend should also be Tousan's Borin-sensei was too much a coincidence. There shouldn't be any connection at all, but it was also insupportable to say that there were _two_ such individuals who looked _just alike_ without that being somehow connected.

When they had the meal on the table and Kaasan called Tousan out of his study, he and Borin-sensei were deep in conversation. Something like conversation, anyway—Tousan was talking excitedly and Borin-sensei was listening politely. At least, that _looked_ like what he was doing, except that Haru wasn't so sure. She'd seen that kind of look on people's faces before when they were listening to someone—Tousan, a teacher, or someone else who liked to talk a lot—but not really hearing what was being said. Tousan had that effect on people a lot.

There was an awkward moment at the dinner table when they realized that the table was far too high for Borin-sensei to sit and eat at. Tousan flushed and fell over himself apologizing for the oversight while Kaasan sent Haru to gather several thick books from the living room bookshelves. "Don't mention it, please," Borin-sensei said as Haru and Kaasan stacked the books on the seat of his chair. He hopped up to the top of them, apparently utterly unconcerned by having to sit on them. "It's far better than a high chair, I assure you."

Haru giggled, almost in spite of herself, at the mental image that presented—Borin-sensei had so much gravitas that the thought of him in a baby's high chair was incongruous, to say the least. He looked up at her, regarding her thoughtfully, and then Tousan jumped in to apologize some more.

Borin-sensei was a funny sort of academic, Haru decided, listening to them talk as she ate her dinner quietly. He didn't have much—anything—to say about his own work, which was frankly amazing. When Nakagawa-sensei or Mizutani-sensei came to dinner, it always ended up in a battle to dominate the conversation. But Borin-sensei let Tousan rattle on and on without once trying to hijack the conversation to his own research. That was unprecedented in Haru's experience, and she would have wondered whether Borin-sensei was even an academic at all if he hadn't occasionally responded cogently to the points Tousan was making. 

It was all very strange, and made for a quiet dinner for her, since Tousan didn't call on her to demonstrate what a smart daughter he'd had. Haru knew better than to interject herself into the conversation without that opening. She excused herself after the meal and went upstairs to work on her homework, and then thought until it was time to go to bed.

Sawada and her friends were even more interesting than she'd initially decided they were. Their patterns were absolutely baffling.

About the time she'd decided to go to bed, she heard Kaasan in the hall, conducting Borin-sensei into the little cubby of a room that she sometimes called her office, though never without a twist to her mouth. It also served as a guest room when they needed one, and sometimes for storage or other things, and occasionally Kaasan sat in there with Tousan's papers, lending a hand with grading or proofreading. Haru didn't think much about that as she changed into her pajamas and slipped into bed. She picked up her book and settled in for a chapter as she listened to the sounds of the rest of the household preparing for bed.

She was embroiled in her reading when the door opened just wide enough to permit a small figure inside, and her first thought when that occurred was to wonder how on _earth_ Borin-sensei could have reached the doorknob. Then her brain caught up with things and she opened her mouth, intending to demand to know what he thought he was doing in her bedroom. What came out was something else altogether. "Who are you, really?"

He paused in the act of hopping onto her desk, balanced on the seat of her chair, and gave her an assessing sort of look. "You mean you don't know?"

Haru shifted around, leaning against the wall and tucking the blankets in around her knees as he hopped up to her desk. "I know you're strange," she said as he seated himself, a peculiar figure in a nightshirt and diminutive nightcap. "I've seen you, or someone who looks very like you, walking past my house in the mornings for a few months now. I know that you have enough mathematical theory to put on a good show with Tousan, but that I can't find you in any bibliographies. Aside from that, I don't know who on earth you are."

"Ah," he said. "An empiricist." He gave her a long look. "Or a very good strategist."

"To be a good strategist, you have to know what the game is," Haru countered, one part of her wondering what she thought she was doing and the rest of her just thrilled to be talking to one of the strange people who had captured her attention so thoroughly.

"A fair point." He lapsed into silence, watching her with unblinking eyes. "I find that I don't know what to make of you, either."

Later in her life, Haru would come to realize how uncharacteristic an admission that was for him, but she had no way of knowing his patterns yet, and only said, "Make of _me_?" Was it possible that his visit wasn't at all about mathematics or her father?

"You _appear_ to be a girl in a private academy with an eye for detail and a rather better brain than you care to let anyone else know about." His voice was very calm, as if he were reciting a theorem. "Your grades are good but not outstanding; your athletic performance is really very precise. You take great care in your interactions with other people, but do not seem particularly comfortable with them, or perhaps with your handling of those interactions. And either you have no criminal connections at all, or are so clever that I can't uncover them."

No criminal—that didn't even make _sense_ , given the other things he'd mentioned, which was another fascinating disjuncture in the pattern he made. More significantly… "Have you been spying on me?" What a discomfiting thought. Haru wrapped her arms around herself, skin crawling just a bit.

"You've been spying on my—" his hesitation was barely perceptible "—pupil." 

His pupil. "That's Sawada, isn't it?" Haru asked, eager in spite of her discomfort. "It must be," she continued when he kept his mouth shut. "It's the only thing that fits, since you were the first person to show up and it looks like Yamamoto and Gokudera orbit her. Whatever you are, she's at the heart of it." And he'd asked _her_ about criminal connections. "Are you yakuza?" she hazarded.

He didn't show any reaction that Haru could perceive, but the atmosphere in her room turned indefinably sharper. "Tell me why you asked that."

"It fits," Haru said slowly, feeling her way through her response and unraveling the logic that had gone into that leap. "The patterns the group of you make. The spying. The way you talked about _my_ criminal connections. You wouldn't ask that kind of a question if it weren't already a concern, and since I'm _not_ yakuza, you must be. Or something like it. Or have dealings with the yakuza. Something like that, I don't know. I still don't have enough information to figure out what patterns the group of you make." She thought that she ought to have felt a little more concerned about talking privately with a possible member of the criminal element like this, but it was almost an afterthought, like Tousan embroiled in his writing and forgetting things like meals and sleep.

"The patterns we make?" He tilted his head to the side, the tassel of his nightcap bobbing as he regarded her. "Say more about that." Haru's shoulders hunched themselves without her thinking about it. "You don't want to."

"I shouldn't have said that," Haru said, acutely conscious of all the times that trying to explain patterns had backfired on her.

"Perhaps not. Too late now." He lifted a tiny hand and snapped his fingers, imperious. "Tell me what that meant." 

Haru pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them and the blankets to her chest. "People make patterns," she said reluctantly. "If you pay enough attention, you can see them. Only you're all… complicated. So your patterns are hard for me to see."

He didn't laugh, which was a kind of relief. He didn't say anything at all, actually, not right away, though Haru felt like she could almost feel him thinking. When he was done with that, he asked another question. "Why are you so interested in the patterns people make?"

Haru blinked. "Why wouldn't I be?" He raised his eyebrows, so she tried to explain. "It's… people change their patterns. They don't get… locked in. Not all of them. And that's—I want to understand how they do that." If she could understand that, then she could—do anything.

"I begin to see." Which wasn't a statement that told her much, but then, it probably hadn't been meant to. He looked at her, pursing his mouth, and finally said, "I'll tell you two things." He held up a finger. "If you pursue this pattern, it'll change things. And change isn't always good or safe." Haru nodded, acknowledging that, and he held up a second finger. "Second, the pastries at the little café called Greatest Cake are especially good on Thursday afternoons." He folded his fingers down and jumped off her desk, and somehow managed to land without making a sound.

"What does that—" Haru stopped herself as he glanced up at her, because maybe she did know what that meant. "I—okay. Thanks."

"You may not thank me when all is said and done. Think carefully on that," he directed her, and let himself out.

Haru was too caught up in puzzling that out to pay attention to how he negotiated the doorknob.

   
 

Bianchi kept one ear on Tsunako's doleful account of the weekend and Kyouko's delighted giggles—it was pretty amusing in retrospect, though it hadn't been all that funny at the time. The boys were coming along nicely, though, and Tsunako was too. Bianchi wasn't sure Tsunako even realized it, given the exasperation in her voice as she described those three hapless would-be pickpockets' attempts to make off with Nana's money. That was something they were going to have to address at some point, probably sooner rather than later. 

Before they could do that, however, there were other things to consider.

Tsunako came to the end of the story and Kyouko smothered her giggles behind her hand. "I wish I could have seen their faces."

Tsunako looked like she wished she weren't smiling at that. "They _did_ look pretty upset by the end." She rattled the ice in the bottom of her glass. "I'm going to get something else to drink. Do either of you want anything?"

"No, I'm fine," Bianchi said, and Kyouko waved the offer aside. Tsunako smiled and got up; Bianchi watched her go, reflecting on the changes a few months could make.

Then Kyouko said, voice low and her lips barely moving, "The girl two tables over has been watching us all afternoon."

"Yeah, I know." She'd been keeping an eye on her, in fact, for reasons of her own. Bianchi glanced at Kyouko, keeping one eye on Tsunako at the same time. "What else do you see?"

"She was here last week, too." Kyouko tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "That's a Midori uniform she's wearing, and Midori's a little out of the way for her to be here. Especially alone. And she watched us all afternoon last week, too." She paused. "Us. Well, Tsunako-chan."

"I noticed that, too." Though probably for slightly different reasons than Kyouko had. Bianchi took a sip of her espresso and used it to glance over. Miura Haru, that was the name. The girl was slight and dark-haired and, as Kyouko had noted, all alone at her little table. She watched the people around her like she was absorbing everything about them.

"Do you think she's…" Kyouko's voice trailed off for a moment; Bianchi thought she was reluctant to say what she thought, but then Kyouko finished, "A problem?" 

So it had been a matter of finding the proper word, then. And wasn't that just the question? Reborn had been cryptic, which could have meant that Miura wasn't a threat, or could have meant she was only enough of a threat to make things lively for Tsunako. Reborn _did_ like to encourage an active approach to learning. "I don't know yet," Bianchi said as Tsunako turned away from the counter and began threading her way back through the crowd toward their table.

"Would you like me to speak to her and see what I can find out?" Kyouko asked. Bianchi wasn't Reborn, not by a long shot, and didn't have his sangfroid or his reluctance to show surprise when something warranted it. She cast a startled glance at Kyouko, who looked back, the very picture of composure, and raised her eyebrows. "It would be a way to find out what she might have to say for herself."

"It might," Bianchi allowed, tempted by the idea and by the thought of getting to see Kyouko in action. As Tsunako slid back into her seat, Bianchi drummed her fingers against the table. "You do realize that's a risky proposal." A voice rather like Reborn's scoffed at that caveat in the back of her brain, but Bianchi ignored it with the aid of habit. Sometimes Reborn didn't pay enough attention to the collateral damage, and Kyouko didn't have as many defenses against physical attack as she ought. Yet.

Kyouko pursed her lips, delicately. "I suppose there is some risk," she admitted as Tsunako looked back and forth between them, clearly trying to figure out what they'd started discussing in her absence. "I think it might be something I could mitigate, however. This is the second week. Do we have cause to suppose there will be a third?"

"There certainly could be," Bianchi said.

"Then perhaps I could come ahead next week." Kyouko's eyes looked distant for a moment, calculating. "By ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps, and the two of you to follow. There would be enough people around to prevent unpleasantness." She paused. "And maybe Reborn would like to come along to observe things?"

So she _had_ caught on to how much time Reborn spent watching over them. By God, they'd gotten lucky with her.

Tsunako cleared her throat. "What are we talking about?"

"Have you noticed the girl in the Midori uniform?" Kyouko asked. "The one who's sitting a couple tables over?" She folded her hands under her chin and flicked her fingers in the appropriate direction.

Tsunako looked, not particularly casually, and blinked a bit. "Her?" she asked, looking more puzzled than anything else. "Should I have?"

Bianchi suppressed a sigh; they were going to have to work on that.

"She's been watching us quite intently," Kyouko said. "I was just thinking I might go over and talk to her and see whether I could find out why, and Bianchi-san and I were talking logistics."

Tsunako glanced around again, probably without even thinking. "What, her? Really?" She smiled at Bianchi and Kyouko, half-uncertain. "You don't think it's just because she likes cake, do you?"

"It could be, I guess," Kyouko conceded. "But it would be a good idea to be sure. Don't you think?"

Tsunako looked like she still had some doubts; Bianchi repressed another sigh. Someday she'd get the girl to understand how important she actually was, but it probably wasn't going to be any time soon. More was the pity. "I… guess. Do you really think it's dangerous?" she asked Bianchi.

"There's always a risk," Bianchi said, careful, because Reborn really _hadn't_ been all that specific.

Tsunako's mouth tightened. "And you want to do this _alone_?" she asked Kyouko. "That doesn't seem fair."

Bianchi buried her smile behind her espresso. There were plenty of things left for Tsunako to learn, but some of them she already had a fine grasp on.

"I won't be _alone_ ," Kyouko pointed out. "I think we can assume Reborn will be happy to observe."

" _Observe_ ," Tsunako said, tone dark. "Yeah, I'm sure he'd observe. What _I'm_ worried about is whether he'd do anything _but_ observe."

Kyouko smiled, faint and true, and murmured, "Well, you could tell him to lend a hand if he thought it was needed."

Tsunako gave her a look of utter disbelief; Bianchi couldn't fault her for it. "Tell him," Tsunako repeated. 

Kyouko's cheeks dimpled as she laughed. "Well, ask him politely?"

"Maybe," Tsunako said, tone dubious. "And then I'll ask for a pair of wings so I can fly, shall I?"

Kyouko laughed again, bright and amused. "It doesn't hurt to ask," she pointed out. "And if he won't play along, I could always borrow one of the boys. Yamamoto-kun, I think."

Tsunako opened her mouth and stopped, looking at Kyouko. When she spoke, Bianchi suspected it was something entirely different from what she'd meant to say. "Why are you so set on doing this?"

Kyouko shrugged. "It needs to be done," she said. "And I think it's something I'm suited for, don't you?" Her mouth quirked. "More so than beating up wannabe thieves."

"It was only _one_!" Tsunako protested automatically. "Yamamoto and Gokudera handled the other two!" She stopped and gave Kyouko another look. "We'll ask Reborn," she said. "And if it really is dangerous, the boys, too."

"That should be acceptable," Kyouko agreed, smiling serenely, and Bianchi once again considered how lucky they were that Sasagawa Kyouko was going to be on _their_ side.

   
 

It was strange, Haru thought, how Thursdays had so quickly come to be the day of the week she most looked forward to. It barely seemed logical, but it had already happened—two weeks of observing Sawada and her two friends she didn't know names for had made Thursday afternoons something to look forward to. 

Now, if only she could figure out the right way to approach them and introduce herself. There was the _real_ problem, the one she didn't know how to solve. She almost hoped that they'd be the ones to speak to her—Sawada had looked her way a couple of times last week, and it had seemed deliberate—but failing that… perhaps she could find a reason to strike up a conversation? Maybe about the food, because the cakes _were_ quite good here. Or… surely there was something. The older girl's—woman's?—hair color, maybe, thought Haru didn't quite know whether she dared. That one was so effortlessly, deliberately in control of herself, and Haru didn't know what to make of her patterns yet.

Yet. That, she told herself as she drifted over to her window, toothbrush in had, was the operative word.

It seemed like a promising sign when the three of them—no, four, Borin-sensei was walking along the wall this time—came down the sidewalk as she brushed her teeth. Yamamoto was saying something, illustrating it with a wave of his hands, and Gokudera was smoking. It was difficult to say at this distance, but Haru thought he was rolling his eyes, too. Sawada was smiling, though. Then Borin-sensei stopped directly in front of her house, briefly, and lifted a hand to adjust the brim of his fedora as he turned his tiny face up. Haru was nearly certain he was looking her way, but before she could figure out how to react, he'd lowered his hand and moved on.

She didn't hold much with superstition, but it was difficult not to take that as a sort of sign. Today was going to be the day, wasn't it?

Haru went through her day on a sort of autopilot, taking notes in class and responding to questions when she had to, but her thoughts kept returning to Sawada and her friends and what she should say. Borin-sensei had mentioned danger, risk, and a part of her stomach seemed devoted to butterflies and second-guessing that. Did she really want to get involved in something dangerous?

On the other hand, it was certainly a shot at doing something out of the ordinary, something none of the other patters she'd seen playing out in her own life could account for. And that, more than anything else, was what decided her. At the end of the day, she skipped out of Izumi-sensei's class—it wasn't like Izumi-sensei was lecturing on anything she hadn't already extracted from the textbook herself—and caught the bus across town. She claimed one of the small tables near the corner table Sawada and her friends usually took and opened up a magazine next to her plate of petit fours, and tried not to be nervous now that she was almost committed. 

When the girl who had accompanied Sawada walked in with Yamamoto, but without Sawada anywhere in evidence, Haru's mind went blank with confusion—this wasn't supposed to happen. Yamamoto and the other girl glanced around the shop, then the girl made a straight line for the table where Haru was sitting. She smiled down at Haru, all perfection and poise. "Hi! Would you mind if I joined you?"

"I—no. Not at all," Haru said, too surprised to be the one approached to say otherwise.

"Lovely." The girl drew out the chair opposite Haru's and settled into it. Yamamoto hung back, a lone tall figure among the slight figures of the girls surrounding the display case and clustered at the counter. For all the casual way he stood, hands in his pockets and an easy smile on his face, Haru thought he was—watchful. And the other girl was arranging her hands before her, curling her fingers together as she smiled. "I'm Sasagawa Kyouko."

"Miura Haru," she responded, finding that she didn't quite know what to say—all the mental scripts she'd prepared had been for speaking to Sawada, but Sasagawa didn't strike her as having very many of the patterns that she'd seen in Sawada. And that was—disconcerting. Yes, disconcerting.

Sasagawa seemed to understand her uncertainty, or perhaps just had her own agenda. She smiled again, quick, and tipped her chin just a bit. "Isn't that a Midori uniform?" When Haru nodded, Kyouko smiled, looking satisfied. "I thought so. You've come a long way for cake."

Haru blinked, trying to parse that. Was… was Sasagawa trying to… warn her off? "The cake here is very good," she said, for lack of anything better to say. "And I don't… live that far away."

Sasagawa smiled. "Isn't the cake good? It's one of my favorite cafés." She lifted a hand and rest her chin on the palm. "It's a good place to meet friends."

Haru found herself fidgeting with the pages of her magazine, riffling the edges, and made herself still her fingers. "I—can see that." She hesitated and then said, quickly so that she wouldn't lose her nerve, "Where are the friends you usually sit with?"

Sasagawa's smile stretched across her face, wide and satisfied. "Why do you ask?"

Haru hesitated, not certain how direct she ought to be with Sasagawa, this unknown quantity. Sasagawa was watching her, her eyes steady, and it looked like Yamamoto was watching them both. But Borin-sensei _had_ sent her here, hadn't he? She took a breath and met Sasagawa's eyes. "The three of you are usually together, and the way you interact with the staff says that's a regular arrangement. So I wondered."

"So you _were_ watching us." Sasagawa's tone was casual enough, but she seemed to have gone alert on some other level. "May I ask why?"

"You can, I guess." And now they came to the problem. "I don't know if I can explain without sounding weird. Or crazy." Too late now to adopt a cheerful, cute cover, too—Sasagawa had already seen her nervous and discomfitted.

Sasagawa hummed thoughtfully, but before she could say anything, Yamamoto strolled over, deposited a plate with a slice of the lemon tart at her elbow, and grinned at Haru before he took himself off again. Haru blinked a little, surprised, and said, "Is he your boyfriend? I didn't think—" Then she stopped herself, embarrassed.

Sasagawa raised her eyebrows again as she picked up the fork and sliced off a small bite of tart. "Didn't think what?" she prompted as she raised the fork to her mouth.

"I… didn't think he was interested in anybody but Sawada," Haru said.

Sasagawa blinked a couple of times, but didn't react otherwise. "You've been watching us for a while," she said, thoughtful tone at odds with the mild, polite smile she wore.

"The three of them walk by my house in the mornings before school." Haru toyed with the pages of her magazine, rolling up the corner of one glossy page and unrolling it again. "I asked some people at Namimori about them when I was there for a competition." That really did sound weird and creepy and awful now that she'd said it out loud. She must have been crazy to think that this was a good idea. "They just seemed… interesting."

Sasagawa hummed again and took another bite of her tart before saying anything. "Tsunako-chan is an interesting person. And she attracts other interesting people." She raised her eyebrows. "So that's why you've been… observing us so closely? Because we're interesting?"

Haru nodded and looked aside; Yamamoto had taken up a seat at a nearby table, stretching his long legs out underneath it, and was keeping a close eye on them both. "I told you I wasn't going to be able to explain without sounding weird."

"Mm, not that weird, I think. I'm friends with Tsunako-chan because she's interesting," Sasagawa said. When Haru turned to look at her, Sasagawa's smile was faint, but warm. "You have good eyes to spot that."

"I… do?" Haru shook her head and corrected herself. "I mean, I'm… I know I'm good at watching people. Do you…" She paused, recalling the way Sawada's schoolmates had spoken about her. "Do you mean that people don't see that, too?"

"You would be _amazed_." Sasagawa's tone was dry as dust, droll and biting all at once. "So. Did you plan on just watching Tsunako forever, or were you thinking of doing something about that?"

It was Haru's turn to blink. "I—" She nibbled her lip. "I was trying to figure out a way to strike up a conversation," she confessed, feeling shy about it.

Sasagawa smiled; it was kind. "I think we've managed to get around that, at least." She took another bite of her tart, chewed slowly, and once she'd swallowed said, "The thing is, being Tsunako-chan's friend isn't exactly simple."

"I—think I already knew that." Haru glanced around and lowered her voice reflexively, even though the shop was busy enough now that she doubted that anyone would have heard her. "She's from a a yakuza family, isn't she?"

Sasagawa looked surprised. "Not precisely, but close enough. How on earth did you find _that_ out?"

"I—that, um, guy who looks like a baby?" Sasagawa's eyes went sharper as she nodded. "I put it together based on some of the things he said to me."

"So you've spoken to Reborn?" Sasagawa looked exasperated. "And _of course_ he didn't tell us. Honestly." She put her fork down and reached into her bag for her phone; her fingers flew over the keys as she composed a message and spoke at the same time. "And when we complain later, all he'll say is that he wanted to see what we would do and that this will be valuable training for later, of course. That's one of the hazards of being Tsunako-chan's friend, you realize. You have to put up with Reborn." And that, her tone implied, was a tribulation indeed.

Haru blinked at the sudden change in Sasagawa's demeanor, and put aside the question about Reborn—was that what Borin-sensei was really called?—to the side. "Are you—that sure Sawada will be my friend?"

"I don't see why the two of you shouldn't get a chance to interact with one another and find out," Sasagawa said, all calm practicality about it. She gathered up her plate and fork. "Come on, let's move to that table over there. It'll seat more people."

Bemused by the speed at which Sasagawa moved, Haru gathered up her things and followed her over to the table where Yamamoto was lounging. His grin lit up his face as they approached. "Everything okay?"

"Reborn and Miura-chan have already talked," Sasagawa said, bone-dry.

Yamamoto immediately laughed, rueful and open. "No kidding. That guy never gets tired of the tests, does he?" He grinned across the table as Haru took a seat. "So I'm Yamamoto Takeshi. Nice to meet you."

"Miura Haru," she said, "and likewise." Surely it couldn't be this easy, but it seemed to be as far as Yamamoto and Sasagawa were concerned. Borin-sensei, or Reborn, or whatever his name was—his say mattered a lot in this circle. For now, she could see why the girls at Namimori had sighed so dramatically over Yamamoto: he _was_ handsome, and what was more, he had a friendly, engaging smile, one that he turned on her. "So, how'd you meet Reborn?"

"Is that his name?" Haru countered. "He was going by Borin-sensei—he came to visit my father's department as a visiting scholar, and my family hosted him. We, um, talked then."

"A visiting scholar?" Sasagawa sounded interested.

"Mm, yes. My father is a mathematics professor," Haru explained. "Kaasan and I thought it was a little strange that we hadn't ever seen Borin-sensei's name in any of the journals, but everyone in the department was so excited…" She shrugged. "I assume he's not really a mathematician?"

Sasagawa and Yamamoto exchanged looks. "Well," he said after a moment, "he _could_ be, I guess. But that's not really what we know him for."

"He did talk about having a pupil," Haru said.

Yamamoto laughed. "Hahah, yeah, I guess you could call it that." He chuckled again. "It's more fun that school, anyway." 

Sasagawa smiled. "He's really more like Tsunako-chan's tutor," she said. "And we're… becoming part of that." She considered Haru. "He must think you'll fit into that as well."

That sounded kind of like speculation and caution all at the same time. Haru chewed on her lower lip, but—"Do you think so?"

"Reborn has reasons for everything." Sasagawa shrugged and looked up. "Ah, here they come—my goodness. How did they talk Gokudera-kun into coming along?"

"Maybe Sawada-chan asked him?" Yamamoto guessed; there was laughter threading through his voice. "You know that's all it would take."

"Yes, but—there'll be food." Sasagawa sounded worried, though she was smiling a bit as Sawada and Gokudera and the woman Haru didn't know came in. (For some reason, the latter was wearing goggles, which didn't exactly make sense, but seemed to be going unremarked by the rest of them. Haru added that to her mental files to figure out later.)

"Eh, he just won't have anything," Yamamoto predicted, stretching a hand into the air and waving it around energetically, even though the three of them had already seen them. Gokudera grimaced and started over while Sawada and the woman headed for the counter.

The first thing he said when he had slouched over was "Stop waving, you look ridiculous."

"Just wanted to make sure you saw us." Yamamoto's smile was all good cheer, but Haru thought he was teasing Gokudera, because Gokudera bristled immediately as he dropped himself into a chair. 

"Don't be so fucking stupid, no one could miss you, you enormous idiot." He then fixed a piercing stare on Haru, one that was startlingly, intensely green. "So who are you?"

And again, the sighing girls made sense: Gokudera's dramatic coloring was even more striking up close. (Actually, everyone surrounding Sawada was gorgeous, now that she was thinking about it, and even Reborn had a certain adorable rakishness, for someone who looked like a baby.) "I'm Miura Haru," she said, feeling rather like he was evaluating her for her potential to—she hardly knew what.

"And this is Gokudera Hayato," Sasagawa said when all he did was grunt at Haru's introduction. She was smiling, amused. "Reborn's been talking to her, Gokudera-kun."

Gokudera's fingers stilled where he had been twisting the rings he wore (heavy, silver things, two patterned bands on one hand and a skull on the other). He looked at Haru again, narrowing his eyes. "Has he."

Haru couldn't get anything off that utterly flat tone, couldn't tell _what_ it meant, and retreated to the only pattern she knew for dealing with uncertain situations. She giggled, the nervous sound sticking in her throat as Gokudera's eyes went even narrower. "He has," she said, permitting the words to tumble out in a rush, which they wanted to do anyway. "Of course that wasn't what he called himself, he said he was Borin-sensei and he talked to my father about mathematics."

"Oh my god." Gokudera leaned his head back and addressed the ceiling, for some reason. "Seriously, you must be joking."

Haru twisted her hands together in her lap while Sasagawa and Yamamoto eyed him and her and each other. Sasagawa was the first to clear her throat. "Of course, he was more interested in speaking with Miura-chan." She toyed with her slice of cake while Haru adjusted her sense of Gokudera to include a tendency to take things at surface value. Or something like that. "Miura-chan says the three of you walk past her house in the mornings."

That got Gokudera's attention again. He snapped his eyes down from the ceiling, focusing on Haru like she was the only thing he could see. The sudden weight of that regard unnerved her; her stomach fluttered, strange and sick, and she regretted the lone petit four she'd consumed. "Where do you live?" he rapped out, staccato as gunfire from a television screen. Haru gave him her address before she could even think about it, something about the way he snapped the question out demanding her answer. "Hah!" He banged his fist against the table and turned to Yamamoto. "See? _See?_ I _told_ you that changing the routes was important! If _she_ was paying attention—" he jabbed an accusing finger at Haru "—God only knows who else might be. Some of them might even be _real_ threats."

Her cheeks felt hot and she had to stifle the impulse to cover them with her hands to cool them, though it was nonsense to be annoyed by the way Gokudera seemed to have already classified her in his own scheme of things. She didn't even want to be a threat! (She still didn't even know what kind of threat a middle-school boy could be worried about.) Still, it stung a bit, even as Yamamoto laughed and held up his hands. "Hey, hey. You're the expert, you know I'm not going to argue."

"No, you're just going to humor me instead." Gokudera folded his arms across his chest, slouching lower in his chair, looking for all the world as though he was set to have a fit of the sullens right then and there. "Don't think I can't tell. _Some_ of us aren't stupid."

Sasagawa's eyes never stopped moving through the entire exchange, Haru noticed, though she hadn't said anything. Now she broke in. "Oh, dear, I think we're going to need another two seats, aren't we? Tsunako-chan and—" there was the briefest suggestion of a pause there "—your sister are going to need someplace to sit."

Wow, Sasagawa was pretty good. Gokudera came alert at the first mention of Sawada's name and was moving before she'd even finished. He unfolded himself from his slouch and confiscated a pair of chairs from a neighboring table while the rest of them shuffled their own chairs around to make room for the additions. Gokudera took the seat next to Haru's after the adjustments, close enough now that she could smell the acrid odor of cigarette smoke that clung to his clothes—another piece of data for the patterns she was building. Yamamoto shuffled around, too, so that the empty seats were on the far side of the table, just in time for Sawada and the woman—Gokudera's sister?—to join them, their hands full of plates and drinks. Sawada took the seat farthest from Haru, which gave Haru the first really good chance to look at Sawada Tsunako face-to-face that she'd had yet. She wore her hair short; it flew around her face in fluffy brown wisps. She looked around her as she sat, seeking something, and frowned a little whenever she didn't find whatever it was, but settled into her chair as the woman with her passed around the cups of tea on her tray, one to Sasagawa and Yamamoto and skipping over Gokudera entirely. Yamamoto also got a plate with a wedge of something chocolatey from Sawada's tray, but again, Gokudera got nothing. 

Haru blinked at glanced his way; there was a muscle working in his jaw, but he didn't say anything about being overlooked—strange. Very strange.

"I hope I picked something good," Sawada told Yamamoto as he accepted a fork and a napkin from her. "I wasn't sure what to choose, but you like chocolate, right?" 

He just smiled. "Course I do. This looks great." He kept that smile on her, warm and reassuring, until she ducked her head over her own plate. Meanwhile, the muscle in Gokudera's jaw twitched faster.

Haru found herself revisiting her previous hypothesis. _Were_ they all three friends? It didn't exactly look that way.

Then Sawada raised her eyes from her plate and looked across the table at Haru, clear-eyed and strangely direct, and Haru put that question aside for later. "Hello," she said; her voice was quiet.

Sasagawa stepped in then to make introductions. The woman (not quite a woman, actually, Haru decided on closer inspection, though she carried herself like adults did) was Bianchi, though it wasn't clear whether that was her given name or her family name. She sat quietly, drinking her coffee, and her eyes never stopped moving—tracking what she was looking at was difficult, thanks to the goggles that obscured half her face, but it looked like she was watching both Haru and all the other patrons of the shop. She inclined her head when Sasagawa introduced her, but that was all. 

And Sawada just watched her, almost like she didn't know what to make of Haru or her presence. It was a fair reaction, Haru supposed. She barely knew what to make of her own presence at this table or the impulse that had driven her to make use of Borin-sensei's—Reborn's—tip. 

So Sasagawa was the one who said, tone bright, "You go to Midori, isn't that right? What's it like there? I thought about applying, but I don't think my grades would have been good enough."

"It's not that difficult," Haru said, after a moment to change mental tracks. "The entrance exams were the most challenging part. The rest is easy enough if you pay attention and can keep up with the homework." There was a lot of that, but it was a school that prepared its students for rigorous high schools; there was supposed to be a lot of studying.

Sawada winced just a bit at the mention of keeping up with the homework, but Sasagawa smiled. "Mm, I'm not sure I'd care for that part." She curled her fingers around the teacup in front of her and cast a sly smile at the boys. "But it must be restful to go to school without having to worry about boys."

"You'd miss us," Yamamoto countered, grinning back at Sasagawa like they shared some secret. Next to Haru, Gokudera grunted something under his breath that she couldn't decipher. She wondered again what was going on, and what the undercurrents moving between the four (five, if she counted Bianchi) meant.

"Not for very long," Sasagawa said, still wearing that amused little smile. Sawada coughed and dropped her eyes to her soda, stirring it with her straw. "I'm sure I'd find something else to do with my time."

"Probably not," Haru said, surprising herself by breaking into their strange flirtation. Sasagawa glanced at her, lifting her eyebrows just a bit, and Haru felt her face go warm again. She laughed, nervous, and tried to explain. "Mostly boys are all that they talk about. My classmates, I mean. I never hear them talking about anything else, anyway."

Gokudera muttered something else under his breath and rolled his eyes, and Sawada glanced up again, a little frown hovering on her lips, but Sasagawa heaved a sigh and snapped her fingers. "Of course, I should have known." She sipped her tea and then shrugged. "So much for that."

"It's probably not that much different from attending any other school," Haru said, wondering why it felt like at least three of them were watching her like cats at a mouse hole—Sasagawa, Sawada, and Yamamoto. "I mean, from what I can tell." Maybe some of the details were different, but the generalities—she was pretty sure the patterns were mostly the same.

"Maybe," Sasagawa said. "But then, you said you've been to Namimori?"

Gokudera went still next to Haru, his incessant fidgeting with his rings arrested, and he turned his head to stare at Haru with another of those narrow-eyed glares. She giggled again, unable to keep herself from it. "Just the once, when my team was there for a competition." Sasagawa took a sip of her tea, no one else said anything, so Haru filled the silence. "The gymnastics team, I mean. That's my club."

Yamamoto straightened up, eyes going bright and interested. "Oh, hey, no kidding. You any good?" He carried a sports bag most mornings Haru saw him; the question made sense, coming from him, if he was the athletic sort.

"Our team is," Haru said, conscious of the way Gokudera was still staring at her. "I'm not bad." All unbidden, Borin-sensei's description floated through her memory: _really quite precise_. "You?"

"Baseball team," he said, all affable good cheer. "I'm not bad, I guess."

Gokudera muttered _again_ , while Sawada glanced at Yamamoto, her lips pursed. "You're the starting player," she said.

Again, Haru felt the layers of things unsaid floating just under the surface of the conversation, things that she had no way of accessing or understanding. She swallowed her frustration with a sip of her soda.

And Gokudera said, clear and distinct, "Okay, this is bullshit. Are we going to sit here making small talk all fucking afternoon, or are we going to ask her what the hell she's stalking Sawada-san for?"

Haru felt her face go hot in the little silence after that. Bianchi was the one who broke it again, shaking her head over her coffee. "Honestly, Hayato. It's like you were raised in a barn."

"Shut up, hag," he retorted. "It's a perfectly legitimate question." He looked at Haru, eyes narrowed and hard. "So what is it?"

"I—" Haru couldn't keep her eyes on him, or Sasagawa, or Yamamoto, or Sawada, or any of them really, so her gaze skittered around the table and the cafe, picking up a cavalcade of impressionistic fragments—the crumbs scattered on Yamamoto's plate and the ring of condensation on the table from her drink and a group of girls laughing together in a corner and Sawada's eyes, curiously thoughtful as they watched her. "I don't—you were just—interesting. That's all. You were interesting and I wanted to know—I just wanted to know." How had Sawada gone from being that isolated figure trudging to school all alone to being surrounded by these people who made such fascinating patterns together? How had Sawada managed to make that change in herself?

Gokudera drew a breath to respond to that, but it was Sawada who said, "Are you sure about that?"

Haru looked at her and saw that Sawada was looking very serious, for someone who was slight and rumpled and playing with the paper from her cupcake. The way Sawada looked at her made Haru shiver; something about it made her feel like Sawada could see all of her patterns unfolded and laid out in neat rows, explicated and carefully mapped, and that she was examining them one by one as carefully as a scientist testing her hypothesis. "Yes," she said, even though she remembered Borin-sensei's warnings. "I really do." 

Sawada nodded and said, "Gokudera, Yamamoto, I'll see you in the morning, okay?"

Gokudera hissed between his teeth, but Yamamoto just chuckled and pushed his chair back from the table. "Yeah, no problem." He hooked his bag over his shoulder and tipped that friendly, easy smile at Haru. "Nice meeting you, Miura-chan. See you around." And he waited, hovering so pointedly that Gokudera had no choice about getting up and saying his goodbyes. He slouched out after Yamamoto, shoulders hunched and his hands stuffed in his pockets, scowling the entire way.

"Sorry about Hayato," Bianchi said after they had gone. "He actually _was_ sort of raised by wolves. It's not entirely his fault that he's so uncivilized."

"He takes his job seriously," Sawada said, quietly, like a counterpoint. It made Bianchi glance at her like she was startled, but Sawada wasn't paying any mind to that. Instead she kept her eyes fixed on Haru. "Why me?"

It was at once the hardest question of all, and the easiest. "Things change for you," Haru told her. "You change things. The patterns people make. Don't you?"

Bianchi and Sasagawa were both silent, watching them now, though there was not telling what they thought of this. Maybe they didn't matter, though, because it was Sawada who was at the centers of their patterns, somehow. It was Sawada who said, "Yes. And no." She frowned, tiny. Thoughtful. "You have to be the one who changes. All I can do is put things in a different perspective."

"That's enough," Haru said, because—it was. It had to be, against all the things she could see stretching ahead of her if she stayed where she was. "That's more than I had before." And she wasn't entirely sure that Sawada was right—it was more than just perspective. Things happened around Sawada. Haru could nearly see it.

Sawada looked at her, eyes thoughtful, and then nodded to herself. "It could be dangerous."

"Reborn already told me," Haru said. "At least that would be _different._ "

Sawada lost the sudden gravity she'd folded around herself and pulled a face. "I wonder if you'll still think that when you've known him for a while." She shook her head and glanced at Bianchi and Sasagawa, like she wanted to be sure they were still there, or maybe to see whether they approved. Then she looked back at Haru and said, "So. What do you know about, um, the mafia?"

The mafia. Haru blinked. Not the yakuza, then, but… close, just as Sasagawa had said. In a way. She took a breath, feeling unaccountably shy about it, and said, "Not much. But I can learn."

   
 

Bianchi brushed her hair slowly, counting off the strokes in her head while Tsunako scowled at her homework. No, she decided, she _was_ going to ask. "You and Haru really clicked today, huh?"

The chance to stop wrestling with her algebra homework meant that Tsunako immediately dropped her pencil and twisted around in her chair to look at Bianchi. "I guess so." She bit her lip and sounded puzzled. "I don't know. I just—felt like I really understood her. Like I was looking at her and it was like looking in a mirror." She shook her head and smiled, wry. "Weird, huh?"

"Sometimes you meet people and just hit it off," Bianchi said. It seemed to satisfy Tsunako, at any rate, but in the absence of anything else, she sighed and went back to her homework.

Later, when Bianchi was sitting outside, jacket wrapped firmly around her to ward off the night's chill, she said, "You hear about the Vongola intuition, but seeing it is something else."

"Yes," Reborn agreed. Bianchi supposed he _would_ know, at that.

Bianchi tucked her fingers into her sleeves and ran her eyes over the surrounding rooftops, finding them satisfyingly empty. "You gonna tell me what Miura's story is, now?"

"Do I need to?" His disapproval floated down from his perch like snow.

"Some of us _aren't_ Vongola, you tiny sociopath. Humor me."

"Lazy," he chided her. "You already know; I've told you about her. And you've heard her describe herself."

"Doesn't fit in with her peers," Bianchi said, thinking out loud since he was set to be stubborn about it. "Doesn't like where her life was going…" Reborn grunted when she trailed off there, so she kept on in that vein. "Pretty smart under all the nerves, from what I could see."

She stopped there because she was fairly certain that _misfit loner_ wasn't the right conclusion. "Tell me about her parents again?"

"The father is a professor of mathematics. The mother stays at home." Reborn lapsed into silence for a moment before he continued. "I'd say the household largely revolves around his ego."

"It's that way, is it?" He didn't answer, but that didn't matter. Made enough sense out of the way Haru had turned to Tsunako and hadn't blinked even once as they'd laid out just what it was they were. "What are you seeing in her?"

"Potential, at the moment." Then, as if he'd seen the roll of her eyes, he added, "She has a gift for analysis."

"Useful," Bianchi agreed, considering that. She leaned her head back and snorted. "She and Hayato are going to get on famously. Like a house on fire." And possibly with all the screaming and chaos that went with that, just as soon as Haru lost some of that uncertainty and or decided Hayato was being too much of a prig, whichever came first. Well, it'd be good for him.

"It would be good for him to have something else to think about," Reborn agreed, echoing her thoughts. And yeah, there was that, too. Something else to think about. Someone else to think about. Same difference.

"There's always something, isn't there?" Bianchi asked, and grinned when Reborn snorted his agreement. Just as well, though. If they'd wanted boring lives, they wouldn't have chosen this, would they?

Bianchi only hoped that the kids, Miura Haru included, would feel the same even after they'd attained more experience with the choices they'd made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was a difficult installment to write, for a lot of reasons. Haru is an odd figure in the manga—is she comic relief? Are we supposed to take her seriously? Is she some mixture of the two?—and figuring out her motivations is a tricky proposition, especially in a rewrite of the Daily Life arc that plays it straight instead of comedic. I spent a long time dithering over what could have (seriously) motivated canon!Haru to so enthusiastically throw her lot in with Tsuna et al., and then how I could translate that into motivating Betrothal!Haru to do the same with Tsunako et al. and then (somehow) have it all make some kind of sense. Whether I did that or not is an exercise best left to the reader, but now you know part of the reason why there was a five-month lag between the last installment and this one. 
> 
> Next up are Fuuta and Dino, probably in that order unless the plot bunnies come up with a better idea, and with any luck in a more timely fashion. 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments!


	5. Dino

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsunako gives Dino some things to think about.

He'd just finished the deal with the Tomasso, which would expand Cavallone holdings in the north by a full third and left him feeling rather satisfied with himself, when Reborn called. Dino stared at the name on his phone's display with a sense of deep apprehension before he could bring himself to answer, because Reborn had an unerring sense for the best ways to puncture a man's ego. "This is Cavallone."

"I certainly didn't expect it to be anyone else," came the testy reply. "How's your Japanese?"

Dino blinked and leaned back in his desk chair so he could stare up at the ceiling. It didn't provide any insight into why Reborn would care about his language skills. "Passable, I suppose."

Before he could ask why Reborn cared, Reborn said, "Good. I need you in Japan. Let me know when you'll be arriving." And then he hung up.

Dino set his phone down, still blinking in his bemusement, and thought about calling Reborn back to remind him that the Cavallone were a powerful Family and that he was a boss second only to Timoteo of the Vongola and Aria of the Giglio Nero. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose and laughed at himself, because Reborn would (maybe) listen to that, be wholly unimpressed, and would then remind him not to waste so much time talking about useless things.

"Boss?" Romario asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Dino let his fingers drop away from his face. "Reborn," he told his right hand, and saw the faintest twitch of Romario's mustache in response. "Apparently we're needed in Japan."

Romario had stood by his side through the entirety of what Dino privately thought of as the Reborn Years, so all he did was sigh faintly. "How soon?"

Dino shrugged. "He didn't say."

Another faint sigh from Romario—the only protest the man ever lodged. "I'll see to it at once."

"Yes, that would probably be best," Dino agreed, and sat back to wonder what on earth Reborn was doing in Japan.

He didn't find out until well after his jet had touched down and the people Romario had sent ahead had conducted them to the house they'd acquired to be their base of operations for—however long Reborn required their presence and business at home could spare them, Dino supposed. 

Reborn was there to greet him, which had _not_ been part of the plan, though it probably should have been. He was standing in the middle of the desk in what would serve as Dino's office and seemed utterly unimpressed with the number of guns aimed in his direction when people realized he was there. "It's about time you got here."

Dino waved a hand at his bodyguards and smiled at Reborn as they stood down. "It's good to see you too, Reborn."

He flapped a tiny hand, dismissing the courtesy. "Send them away. We need to talk."

Dino raised his eyebrows at that; what on _earth_ was Reborn up to out here? "What would I do without you around to keep me humble?" He nodded at Giacomo and Roberto, who looked very unhappy at being dismissed—well, what bodyguard would be happy to leave his post when there was a hitman on the premises? And they didn't know Reborn; no doubt they thought they'd be able to protect him if Reborn should decide he wanted the head of the Cavallone dead.

"Don't you wish you knew?" Reborn's smirk was faintly evil, but that was normal. He watched Giacomo and Roberto slink out and waited for Dino and Romario to take seats. "I trust you're still good at chasing women?"

Whatever Dino had been expecting to hear from Reborn, that hadn't been it. "What?"

Reborn folded his arms across his chest and gave Dino a long look. "Chasing women," he repeated. "Are you still good at it?"

Dino's eyebrows went ahead and climbed his forehead without consulting him about it first. "I don't believe I've had any complaints so far," he essayed, cautiously, which was the only way a person could deal with Reborn and have a hope of coming out the other side with dignity intact. (It was a faint hope, but better than nothing.) "Why do you ask?"

"I have a new student." Reborn was so matter-of-fact about it that it almost didn't sting to hear. "She has no experience with the social games men and women play. You can help me fix that before she enters the mafia world and has to deal with it for real."

Dino blinked at Reborn, who stared back at him, absolutely calm in the face of his bafflement. But then, Reborn was always calmest when the rest of the world was falling apart in confusion and chaos. "All of those words make sense individually, but when you put them together like that, they turn into nonsense."

Reborn blinked at him, one slow flicker of his eyelids, like a lizard. "Don't be stupid. Of course it makes sense."

"You didn't drag me out to Japan just so I could teach someone how to _flirt_ ," Dino objected, except that of course Reborn had. At least, on the surface he had; one always had to look for the hidden reason, nested like matryoshka dolls. "Reborn, be serious, I have a Family to run. I don't have _time_ for this—"

He stopped when Reborn raised his hand. "I think you'll find that your assistance will not go unrewarded."

Dino considered that and glanced at Romario, whose nod was barely perceptible. Yeah, it generally _was_ worth it to see what Reborn was up to when he promised that it would be worthwhile, Reborn's crappy sense of humor notwithstanding. "Say more."

Reborn hopped down from his desk and made himself comfortable on the chair across from it, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. "The Cavallone have been looking at trade in the east, but the Cizeta have been blocking that."

"The Cizeta are a pain in my ass." Dino walked around the desk and tried out his chair, studying Reborn from across the uncluttered surface of the desk—well, if he were going to be here any time at all, it wouldn't stay uncluttered. "So what else is new?"

"The Cizeta are often susceptible to pressure from other Families when it is applied in the appropriate places." Reborn folded his hands across his stomach and gave Dino a moment to digest that.

Dino frowned at him, wrestling with it. "What kind of pressure are we talking about, here?" God knew the Vongola had a whole range of options, should Timoteo care to deploy them, but he'd never known the man to use Reborn as a negotiator before.

Reborn stared up at him, solemn as a little stone idol, and said, "What sort of pressure would you like?"

He wasn't Vongola to have their intuition, but he _had_ spent years with Reborn as his tutor, which was almost as good. Dino frowned. "Does Timoteo know you're meeting with me?"

"Are you going to believe me if I say yes?" Reborn countered.

"Maybe." Dino folded his hands under his chin and leaned forward to scrutinize Reborn some more. "What if I asked you whether he'd authorized you to negotiate for the Vongola?"

Reborn didn't even blink, his stare unwavering and bland. "I think you'd find that I have a great many discretionary powers just now." He never had lost at poker, either, as far as Dino recalled.

"Be that as it may." He studied Reborn, conscious of Romario's silence. "I'd like to know why you want _my_ help for flirting lessons. I don't work for cheap, you know."

"I hadn't expected you would," Reborn said, just as calmly. "You are, however, trained by me and are reliable. And trustworthy."

People would flatter him, Reborn had lectured once, while Dino had been splayed across the ground, trying to get his breath back. He should, Reborn had said, never trust anyone who sought to do so, because their only purpose in doing so would be to disarm him and incline him to give their requests more credence that they deserved. The lecture played out in his memory, unspooling nearly automatically, but nevertheless he felt a flush of pleasure at the compliment. He set it aside to savor later. "Reliable and trustworthy. Just who are these lessons _for_?"

That must have been the question Reborn had been waiting for, because he went still, all pretense of being here for an amiable discussion falling away to reveal the truth of him—the Vongola's top hitman, Timoteo's hunting dog, the one who'd never let his prey slip out of his grasp. Sweat prickled Dino's scalp and spine, chilly beneath his shirt, in spite of himself. "This is not for general consumption." Reborn pronounced each syllable precisely. "If it becomes such, the Vongola will have satisfaction. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly," Dino said, rather proud of how evenly it came out. "The Cavallone will respect that."

Reborn nodded, the dip of his chin clipped. "The lessons are for the Ninth's heir."

Dino sucked in a breath through his teeth, not able to stop himself. Timoteo didn't _have_ an heir. They all knew it and had been watching him these past eight months to see what he was going to do about it, especially since no one knew where Xanxus had gone after his exile. (Dino privately suspected that "exile" was a polite euphemism for "two bullets and a shallow grave" himself and knew he was not the only one who thought so.) "That fox," he said. "That old fox."

Reborn permitted himself a tiny smirk. "Just so."

Dino drew another breath, thinking fast. The Ninth had an heir after all, a female heir, and she had no experience with the mafia, to the extent that Reborn had been given the training of her and needed someone to teach her to flirt. He exhaled and settled back in his seat, unclasping his hands and spreading them on the blotter before him. "So the Vongola would appreciate my assistance?"

"It would be helpful, yes," Reborn agreed.

"I see." Dino didn't dare glance at Romario, who no doubt saw what he saw anyway. "Perhaps Timoteo would even consider himself in our debt."

"He might."

No small thing, that. Dino resisted the urge to drum his fingers against the blotter as he considered his options and found them good. A favor from the Vongola, something to hold onto for a rainy day, plus whatever else he could turn to his advantage—he nodded. "Flirting lessons, huh? I only wish that were the strangest thing you've ever asked me to do."

Reborn lifted his shoulders and let them fall. "Life can be funny. You'll do it?"

Dino smiled at him. "I'm delighted, naturally."

Reborn gave him a look that felt like being stripped bare and inspected and found wanting. "I'm sure you are. I'll be in touch." He hopped down from the chair and strolled out.

Romario waited until later—much later, after the staff had swept the building and declared it clean, and then some—to say anything. "Boss," he said, quiet. "Do you really think—"

Dino swirled the wine in his glass, considering the color. "It's worth a try, don't you think?" 

"It's Reborn," Romario pointed out, ever the voice of reason. "Have you ever gotten the best of him?"

"It has to happen sometime," Dino pointed out. When Romario pursed his lips, he added, "Nothing ventured, Romario. Nothing ventured."

"I suppose." Romario didn't seem particularly convinced, but then it was his job to be pessimistic. "It won't be easy, Boss."

"It's Reborn," Dino told him. "It never is."

And as it turned out, he was absolutely right.

 

Reborn was unforthcoming about the mysterious Vongola heir, unsurprisingly, and also unhurried. Dino found himself cooling his heels for a couple of days, waiting for further word, before he gave up on that. Time spent lounging around their pro tem headquarters was time wasted, Reborn or no Reborn, so when Reborn _did_ call, Dino was in the middle of sifting through the dossiers of several yakuza groups with Romario, arguing with him over which ones might be useful to feel out. They were deep in a discussion over whether Timoteo would consider it poaching to approach one of the syndicates that had a tenuous affiliation with the Vongola when Reborn called. When Dino answered, Reborn reeled off an address without bothering with a greeting. "Hello to you too," Dino told him as he tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder and reached for his pen. "Would you care to repeat that?"

Reborn's exasperation with the foibles of lesser mortals carried through on his sigh. "You're slacking," he said as Dino flicked the cap off the pen just in time to scrawl the address down as Reborn repeated it. 

"Maybe I am." Dino eyed the address, comfortable with the knowledge that slacking off by Reborn's standards was still doing better than most people dreamed. "Tell me what this is?"

Romario leaned back in his seat and mouthed _Reborn?_ at him. When Dino nodded, he sighed and removed his glasses to polish them.

"You'll meet the Poison Scorpion there. She'll escort you to where you will meet our student." Dino felt his eyebrows lifting in response to that; Reborn was still working with _her_? God help him. "You may have your people escort you to that point, but she will take over then."

Dino pinched the bridge of his nose. "Reborn, let's just cut that argument short right there and assume that Romario will be joining us. You know he won't agree to anything less than that." Romario paused in the act of replacing his glasses to give Dino a sharp look. "Ideally, I'd prefer at least one additional bodyguard." Romario frowned, but Dino was good at ignoring the frowns that signaled that his right hand was merely unhappy, not outraged.

"That's what the Poison Scorpion is for." The objection was flat, uncompromising. "You won't need additional support."

"Or I could just let Romario have the phone and let the two of you argue about it," Dino suggested. "That could be fun." To watch, even if he'd probably end up paying for it later. Hell, it was Reborn—God alone knew what was in store for him. He was likely going to end up paying for it regardless.

"No extra men." Reborn's voice was still flat. "This is a matter of Vongola security."

" _And_ Cavallone security, too," Dino pointed out. "When did you say Romario and I would be meeting the Poison Scorpion?" Across the desk from him, Romario's eyes brightened. Well, he always had doted on her for reasons that frankly passed Dino's understanding.

And he was definitely going to end up paying for how exasperated Reborn sounded when he bit out, "Thirty minutes," and hung up. 

It was still worth it. Dino set his phone down and smiled at Romario. "Better order the car," he said. "We're going to be meeting Timoteo's heir in half an hour."

"Charming." Romario began gathering up the dossiers, sorting them back into order according to his own logic. "By way of Miss Bianchi, I assume?"

"So it seems." A body almost had to feel sorry for the Vongola girl, whoever she was, if she had to deal with both Reborn and the Poison Scorpion on top of all her other concerns. It couldn't be easy—he would know. 

On the other hand, if it didn't kill her…

Romario very diplomatically did not ask why Dino was laughing when he picked up the house phone to call for a car.

 

"If I were working with anyone else," Bianchi had said, only halfway joking, "at least I would get to say, 'You _must_ be joking.' But it's you and I know you're not." She'd made a face at Reborn, who had gone on cleaning his gun and paying no attention to her whatsoever. "Honestly, Reborn, Cavallone? For flirting lessons? Why not do the sensible thing and let Kyouko guide her through it once she's old enough for it to matter?"

"By that time it will be too late," Reborn said, imperturbable and final. "And there are some things the girl will not be able to explain."

He hadn't said anything else and so Bianchi stood on a street corner, her shoulders hunched against the January chill, waiting for Cavallone and his right hand to show up so she could take them to meet Tsunako and the rest. She passed the time by wondering what Reborn wanted the mafia's most eligible bachelor to teach Tsunako and horrifying herself with the various unlikely possibilities.

A long black car pulled up precisely on the hour and disgorged Romario first. Bianchi unhunched her shoulders and let her hands hang loose at her sides while his eyes moved over the street, checking the roofs and windows, before he nodded at her and opened the door for Cavallone himself.

Still blond and pretty, Bianchi noted, though a lot less sulky than he'd been the last time she'd seen him. Dressed down, too, in jeans and a beat-up coat. Interesting choice on his part. He stared at her while Romario closed the door and the car pulled away, at least until Bianchi shoved her hands into her pockets and came to meet them. Then he smiled, all smoothly polished surfaces. "Poison Scorpion. You're looking well."

"Yeah, thanks. You're looking like less of a twerp than usual, yourself." It had the virtue of being both true and of making Romario cover his mouth as Cavallone dithered over being outraged or not letting on that he minded being reminded of what a little twit he'd been just a few years ago. "Romario."

He returned her nod gravely, eyes dancing. "Miss Bianchi. It's a pleasure to see you again."

That was what she liked about Romario: his courtesy never wavered no matter what the situation. Bianchi glanced around, but if Cavallone had people on them, they weren't in evidence. "Likewise. Shall we get moving, gentleman? I'm sure you remember that Reborn doesn't like to be kept waiting."

Cavallone grimaced, actually outright made a face, which was something to tell Reborn later when he'd have time to gloat over it. "After you, Poison Scorpion."

"Sure, I'll take point," Bianchi agreed, turning away from them. Their reflections in the storefront across from her showed them glancing at each other before falling into step together, Romario between his boss and the street and his eyes constantly moving. Not that she blamed him for that. Romario never had struck her as being the careless sort.

They were talking, too, though she was far enough ahead that she only caught snatches of their conversation—something about business opportunities and setting up meetings. Reborn would like that; it'd give Cavallone's presence out here a thin veneer of plausibility. They dropped the subject when they caught up with her at the next crosswalk and Cavallone said, "So where are we going?"

"Not far." Bianchi fingered the goggles in her pocket, looking down the street at the café that Reborn had decided should be their neutral ground. The shades were drawn; all was well. The light changed and she set off briskly enough that Cavallone had to do a little skipping hop to catch up. "We're almost there."

"Lovely. I don't suppose you'd care to give me a little bit more about Reborn's student?" He smiled at her, all flashy blond charisma about it.

Bianchi rolled her eyes at him. "Be serious, Cavallone."

He just laughed. "You know I had to try." 

"And you know I'm not going to say a word." Bianchi fished the goggles out of her pocket, swinging them by their strap. "Really, why bother?"

"That's how the game is played." He watched her fit the goggles into place. "Ah. I wasn't aware that we'd be needing special equipment for this meeting."

"It's a fashion statement," Bianchi said, pushing the goggles into place with her knuckle as they came to the café. She rapped on the door, right over the sign that said _Closed_ , and let them in.

The boys were right in the middle of an animated discussion—well, Hayato was haranguing Yamamoto and Yamamoto appeared to be egging him on—and the girls had their heads together, giggling over something else altogether. All of them looked up when Bianchi strolled in, Cavallone and Romario on her heels, and several things happened at once. Hayato broke off mid-sentence and began cursing; his chair hit the floor with a crash as he put himself between Tsunako and the door. Yamamoto got his hand on his baseball bat about half a beat after Hayato started moving, while the girls went still and Tsunako's eyes got wide and uncertain.

And Cavallone said, after a single startled moment, "Reborn, I want a word with you _right now_."

 

Reborn descended from the ceiling tiles as casually as a man stepping out of his car, not that Dino had a lot of attention to spare for that. He was more concerned about the way the Smoking Bomb was glaring at him like he wanted to feed him one of those sticks of dynamite he was clutching. Well, that and the three girls—kids, all of them were _kids_ —sitting at the table, wide-eyed. Reborn ignored all that, planting himself on one of the empty tables, and said, "Was there something?"

"Outside. Now." Dino pivoted on his heel; Romario got the door open for him just in time.

Behind him, someone asked, "Did that guy just tell _Reborn_ what to do?"

He had, and later, when no one else was around to see, he was going to put his head between his knees and hyperventilate over that fact the way it deserved, but that was for later. Before he could do that, there were some things he needed to say.

Reborn had assumed a seat on Romario's shoulder by the time they hit the sidewalk. Dino rounded on him once the door had closed. "What the fucking _fuck_ , Reborn?" he demanded, keeping his voice down despite how much he wanted yell. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

Reborn picked a bit of invisible lint off his cuff. "I'm afraid I don't follow you."

"I'm sure you don't!" Dino threw his hands into the air. "There are too many things wrong with you to even list, aren't there?"

"People sometimes tell me that, though I really don't know why." Reborn inspected his nails, expression as bland as his tone. "Do you care to enlighten me?"

"Let's start with how you apparently think I'm a pedophile!" Dino flexed his hands, itching for his whip or maybe for something a bit more direct, like his hands around Reborn's throat. "Jesus fucking Christ, how old are those kids, _ten_?"

"Fourteen, actually." Reborn glanced at him, sidelong, and went back to inspecting his cuticles. "That's plenty old enough to be going on with, don't you think?"

"No! No, I do not think so!" Dino raked his hands through his hair, appalled. "Fourteen and you want me to teach her about flirting? My God, has she even stopped playing with dolls yet?"

"I don't believe that Tsunako ever was the type to play with dolls." Reborn tilted his head back, studying the winter sky overhead. He exhaled and the fog of his breath hung on the air. "It doesn't matter. She needs to know."

"You can find someone else to teach her, then." Reborn looked down at that, sharp, but Dino folded his arms across his chest and held firm. "I chase _women_ , Reborn, not little girls, and if you can't tell the difference in the two, you need more help than I know how to give you."

"Don't be so melodramatic. I don't expect you to _actually_ court her." Reborn sounded disgusted with him, in that familiar _how can such an idiot figure out how to tie his own shoelaces?_ way. "She's already betrothed. I need you to teach her how to deal with unwanted advances." He paused and reflected on that. "Without violence, that is."

"Already betrothed?" Dino repeated, temporarily diverted. "To whom?"

Reborn's eyes glinted beneath his fedora. "Never mind that. It's none of your business."

"I'm a boss, of course it's my business. What else would it be?" Who could it be? There wasn't any shortage of Families with sons of the appropriate range of ages, but there weren't any among the Vongola's allies that he could think of who'd developed the right sort of attitude to go along with having pulled off such a coup. 

"Never mind." Reborn sounded like he was going to hold firm on that. "All you need to know is that she's already spoken for. And in the meantime, you'll teach her how to deal with the rest of it."

Before Dino could insist he was going to do no such thing, Romario cleared his throat. "Would an example be sufficient?"

"The best learning comes from actually doing." Reborn held Dino's eyes for a moment before he added, grudgingly, "Though I suppose a demonstration would not be amiss."

"That's all well and good, but it still means a demonstration—" Romario's eyes creased at the corners the way they did when he was amused, and a pit opened up at the bottom of Dino's stomach. "Oh, no. Oh, no, you must be joking. You know what she did to the last guy who wouldn't leave her alone." Romeo Vieri hadn't been any great loss to the world, that was for sure, but he'd made a most instructive example on his way out of it.

"I'm sure she'd be less temperamental if she were politely asked to play along." Romario was all reasonableness and helpful smiles. "After all, it would only be a charade for young Miss Tsunako's benefit."

"My God, I am going to die," Dino said, all the times that the Poison Scorpion had glanced at him and then clearly dismissed him from her regard flashing before his mind's eye. "The Cavallone Family is doomed."

"I would have sworn I had trained you out of being such a melodramatic imbecile." Reborn sounded altogether too thoughtful. "And out of whining. Perhaps a refresher course is in order."

Dino took a prudent step back and surrendered to the inevitable. "All right, if she's willing to do it, I'll do my best, but if I end up dead from a poisoned cupcake I am going to haunt the both of you the rest of your lives."

"I'm sure we wouldn't have it any other way, Boss," Romario said. Reborn just snorted.

Dino took a deep breath, summoned up a cheerful smile, and headed back inside.

The discussion inside must have been as intense as his own, because the Smoking Bomb was red-faced and waving his fistful of dynamite in the air to underscore his point. "—can't just spring shit like this on us, it's not—"

"Gokudera," one of the girls said. Her voice was soft; her hair was honey-brown and floated around her face, and she put Dino in mind of someone he'd seen before. That and the way the Smoking Bomb immediately shut up said that this one was Reborn's student. Well, that and the way the other kids were ranged around her.

The Smoking Bomb looked Dino's way and moved, putting himself more squarely between the two of them. "And anyway, what I want to know is _why is Cavallone here?_ "

Dino spread his hands for his sake and smiled at them all as impartially as he could. (Fourteen, all of them—and they still looked like babies, except maybe for the Smoking Bomb and his sister.) "I came to visit my old teacher and to meet his new student." Yes, she blinked and looked surprised; she had to be the one. She was a tiny little thing and didn't look like she was sturdy enough to hold up the Vongola. Poor kid. "We have so much in common, it's almost like we're siblings."

He'd heard that the Smoking Bomb had a serious streak of paranoia; it showed now in the way he glared and watched Dino. Also interesting: the other boy seemed to be willing to take his cues from that and was watching them both with a steady pair of eyes. As far as the girls went, Dino wasn't sure what they were thinking, but they were paying close attention too. 

The Poison Scorpion chose that moment to step in. "Tsunako, this is Dino Cavallone, tenth boss of the Cavallone Family, and his right hand, Romario. Cavallone, this is Sawada Tsunako."

_Sawada_ Tsunako? Dino absently kept track of the other names as they went around, pairing them up with each face, and turned that revelation over. She had to be Iemitsu's daughter, it was too unlikely a coincidence, and besides, what other Sawada had such close ties to the Vongola? He smiled at her. "Charmed to meet you—you must be Iemitsu's daughter. I don't believe I must have had a chance to meet you before he swept you and your mother out of Italy." Which had been for a reason, if only he could dredge up which piece of gossip had been attached to that. He'd been too young and disaffected at the time to care much about it. Fascinating. "And now you're Reborn's student. Small world, isn't it?"

Tsunako looked more confused by all this than anything else. "You came to meet me?"

Dino ambled over to one of the empty tables and perched on it. "Reborn said I should." Breezy, careless; might as well use that reputation for being a twit to his advantage. "You know how it is with him. He says jump and you're in the air before you think to ask how high."

She blinked again and then laughed, a little shy. "I guess." She glanced at Reborn, still on Romario's shoulder. "You really came all this way just to see me."

"Oh, there are a few business things I might do while I'm here, too, I guess. And sight-seeing! I could go sight-seeing, couldn't I? Romario, make a note of that, would you?" The Smoking Bomb hadn't softened one jot; his knuckles were white around his bombs. Not like Rome was built in a day, of course. "It's been too long since I've had a holiday."

Romario, the best of right hands, said, "All of six weeks, Boss. I'll see to it."

The girl, Kyouko, the one with the bobbed hair, raised her hand to her mouth to smother a giggle, and some of the tension in the air dissolved. The other one, Haru, she giggled too, and Tsunako smiled a beat after that, though her forehead was still wrinkled and she looked puzzled. That seemed like enough to be going on. Dino bestowed his most amiable smile on them and lounged right where he was, provisionally pleased with himself. "So!" When they looked at him, he said, "I'm not particularly familiar with your charming little town. I place myself in your hands. What shall I do first?"

From the look the Smoking Bomb gave him, he wanted to suggest a long walk off a short pier. More interestingly, the other boy, Takeshi, and Kyouko exchanged glances with each other before she turned to Tsunako, who shrugged. Permission granted, apparently. "Well," Kyouko began as Dino turned his most vacuously earnest expression on her, "I suppose there are some shrines you might visit, to start off…"

 

Cavallone hadn't been gone a full minute before Kyouko said, "All right, Gokudera-kun, what can you tell us about Cavallone-san?"

The words exploded out of Hayato, who'd nearly vibrated through the entirety of Cavallone's little visit. "He's the tenth boss of the Cavallone Family and he's not as stupid as he looks." He hadn't sat down even once during the meeting and immediately begun pacing, taking turns around the cafe and talking just as quickly as he'd moved. "He's the third-strongest boss in the Vongola's alliance and he's absolutely not someone to fuck around with. The Cavallone were in disgrace when he took over, and now they're one of the strongest Families in general." He stopped there and glanced Bianchi's way. "Reborn is supposed to have trained him, though no one knows much about how that went down."

"And Reborn would say that's the way it ought to be, if he were here and not walking Cavallone home." Bianchi smiled at Hayato's grimace; like hell was she going to breach confidentiality, even for him.

"Anyway, that was a few years ago. Everyone thought he was an idiot and that it was just going to be a matter of time before the Cavallone fell, but then he pulled a fast one on the Risso and the Sciotalle and all of a sudden, the Cavallone were sitting pretty again and the Risso and Sciotalle were in deep shit." He glanced her way again. "I was working for the Bolzoni at the time and never did get the straight of that."

"You hit the important points," Bianchi said. "The only thing I'd add is that the Risso and Sciotalle were the ones who'd helped put the Cavallone in the hole to begin with." Kyouko tipped her head to the side and Haru tapped her fingers against her chin, while Tsunako frowned in silence. "We don't hear much out of them these days." She checked the time. "Reborn will have them away by now. We can get going."

Kyouko and Yamamoto continued to pump Hayato for more information, at least until Hayato ran out of things to relate. Kyouko spent some time on Cavallone's reputation—"So he tends to act like that, and people _still_ take it seriously when they should know better?"—while Yamamoto dwelled on his reputation as a fighter—"Hah, a whip, really? Like Indiana Jones?"

Tsunako didn't say anything at all, not until it was later, after dinner, and she was supposed to be doing her homework. "Why is Cavallone-san actually here?" she asked, not looking up from her notebook.

"Reborn thinks you can learn something from it." That was nicely neutral, at least, and wouldn't alarm Tsunako any more than was necessary. "Why do you ask?"

"Gokudera was really upset." Tsunako stared down at her notebook like it held some explanation for Hayato's paranoia. "More upset than he should have been if Reborn okayed this." She looked up then. "Cavallone spent a lot of time trying to look harmless, didn't he?"

"He has a habit of doing that." Bianchi left off brushing her hair since it was more interesting to watch Tsunako trying to puzzle some meaning out the afternoon's meeting.

Tsunako frowned and picked at the peeling trim of her t-shirt. "He's supposed to be an ally, though, right? Why treat him like a threat?"

"Sometimes alliances fail," Bianchi said. Tsunako looked away, so Bianchi set her brush down and added, "The Risso and Sciotalle were allies of the Cavallone once, you see. But they decided that the things Cavallone's father were trying to do were too much of a threat to their own position, and so they did what they thought was best for their Families. It got Cavallone Nono killed and nearly destroyed the Cavallone itself. The Vongola Ninth decided that it would be best for the Vongola if the Cavallone did _not_ fall, so he sent Reborn to train Cavallone. It could have gone the other way. Cavallone knows that. I can't say how he feels about it, but he has to know it. And the thing is, you're a secret. Cavallone's an ally and he and Reborn have a bond, but it's still possible that the Cavallone could decide that selling the Vongola out would be a greater benefit to them than not. I doubt he will, mind you." Bianchi chuckled. "He'd have to face Reborn at that point, and that's before we even get into what the Vongola would do to the Cavallone."

Tsunako opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and looked aside as she fisted her hands in her lap. "I hate this," she said, after a moment.

"Yeah, I know you do, kiddo." It was all a person could say without breaking out the pretty lies. "That's just how it is."

Tsunako didn't say anything else, and after a moment she went back to her homework.

 

Bianchi crammed her fist against her mouth, but even so, a muffled snicker escaped her. Not that Reborn seemed to be particularly bothered by that; he carried on. "Of course, this will require us to spend some time in Dino's company in a range of social settings. The sight-seeing project ought to serve that end nicely." He stopped then as Bianchi lost her battle with hilarity; as she giggled helplessly into her hand, she felt the weight of his eyes pressing down on her. "Has something amused you?"

"Yeah," Bianchi managed, wheezing with the effort of keeping the noise down. His silence took on an expectant quality. "You—the look on his face when he saw Tsunako—!" And now Cavallone was going to be flirting with _her_ instead? Her giggles threatened to overwhelm her again.

"I suppose he thought that an alliance to the Vongola blood would serve him." There was just enough satisfaction in the way Reborn said that to suggest he'd engineered the whole thing purely to teach Cavallone not to overreach himself.

"Probably." Bianchi passed her fingers over her eyes, wiping away the tears. "I would have come up with the same thing."

"The Ninth wouldn't have stood for it. He has his own plans." The plans of lesser Families and mortals obviously couldn't stand up to that, of course. "I'll have a word with your brother so that he doesn't interfere when Dino starts paying attention to you."

Bianchi leaned her head back, all lingering urges to laugh disappearing. "You don't honestly think he'd care, do you?"

"He recognizes the threat that Dino's presence is. He might, if he thought it would serve Tsunako."

Of course. Bianchi blew out a breath and let it go; she and Hayato had both left the kind of life where there might be other reasons for a brother to warn off one of his sister's suitors a long time ago. "This is one of the crazier things you've done, you know that, right?"

"Dino won't betray us." Reborn sounded as certain as bedrock. "Not even for this."

"I hope you're right."

Reborn huffed. "I always am."

 

"You'll look after the Cavallone once I'm gone, won't you?" Dino asked as the approaching figures first began to resolve into identifiable faces: the Smoking Bomb, Takeshi, the Poison Scorpion, Kyouko, and at the center of the group, Tsunako.

"You're not going to die, Boss." Romario wasn't even pretending that he wasn't smiling, the heartless bastard. "As long as you're polite to Miss Bianchi and play nicely with the other children, everything will be fine."

"You say that." Dino frowned at him, because a night's sleep to remember what had happened to Romeo Vieri wasn't a pleasant thing. "She's pretty enough, but—"

"You're all just playing pretend." Romario dusted his hands off. "More than usual, I mean."

Dino took his eyes off the approaching group. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Romario's expression was too innocent to tell him much. "Young men do tend to take a while to settle, of course. It's the natural way of things." He pushed himself straight from where he was leaning against the side of the car and twitched his suit back into order. "It will be different once you meet the one. When that happens…" He snapped his fingers. "Everything becomes serious, just like that. It's always that way for every Cavallone." His smile turned softer and his eyes went misty. "When your father met—"

Dino broke away from the car and raised a hand, waiving energetically to Tsunako and her entourage. "Hi, we're over here!" As if the group could miss them; they had this little residential side road otherwise to themselves.

Romario took the hint and left off reminiscing, though he did sigh heavily. Dino ignored that; it was what he deserved if he was going to go dredging up old history.

Dino strolled out to meet the kids and gave them a cheerful, impartial grin (despite the way the Smoking Bomb glared). "Hey! I'm glad you could join me!" He beamed at Tsunako, who was back to looking at him uncertainly, even though he'd spent a considerable portion of the previous afternoon's meeting trying to set her at ease. "I hope I'm not being inconvenient for you."

"Only for me, heh." Takeshi grinned back at him, all relaxation compared to the Smoking Bomb. "But I can do conditioning training on my own time."

That's right, he was the athlete. Dino smiled and shrugged. "I guess so? Can't say I ever played with a sports team."

"That's too bad! You missed out." Takeshi's smile didn't waver, but now that Dino was looking at him, he could see that his watchfulness hadn't really slackened either. He was a lot less relaxed than he seemed at first glance. 

Dino shook that bit of disconcertion off and looked around; the Poison Scorpion was watching him, arms folded across her chest. It gave him the same feeling that he'd gotten around her the first time Reborn had shown up with a skinny, hard-eyed girl trailing after him. He didn't like being jeered at any more now than he had then, which was the devil that prompted him to bow to her and say, "And we're lucky enough to have you join us this afternoon, Miss Falco?"

Her non-expression froze for the space of a heartbeat; the Smoking Bomb grunted like he'd been hit. Then, eyes glittering in a way that promised him that he wasn't going to be eating anything with an easy conscience for a while to come, she said, "He had another engagement, so I'm here instead. But please, let's not stand on ceremony. _Do_ call me Bianchi."

"I'd be delighted, of course." Dino turned back to Tsunako. "But aren't we missing someone? Your charming friend, Miss Miura?"

Tsunako was looking back and forth between the Poison Scorpion and her brother and frowning. It took her a moment to realize she'd been addressed; when she did, she blinked at him. "She's still at school. She won't be able to get across town in time to join us."

"Perhaps another time." Dino clapped his hands together. "I suppose we can be moving along, then. May I offer you a ride?"

Tsunako checked with the Poison Scorpion before she nodded. "That would be nice."

Dino beamed at them all and gestured at the car—roomy enough, though they'd probably be a bit crowded. The Poison Scorpion contrived to fall in next to him in the ensuing shuffle. "Pull another stunt like that and you'll only _wish_ you'd come down with food poisoning." Her lips barely moved as she ground that out.

"My apologies." Dino smiled at her with every bit of the sincerity her own smile held. "But I believe that we _are_ supposed to be an object lesson."

"There are all _kinds_ of object lessons," she promised him before sliding into the car.

Dino grinned at nothing at all, feeling like he'd gotten back some of the afternoon a few years back that he'd spent puking his socks up and praying for death, and squeezed himself into the car after her.

 

Bianchi wanted nothing more than to stand back, fade into the background, and take a few minutes to herself under the guise of letting the kids entertain Cavallone (that _bastard_ , that condescending son of a bitch), but that wasn't going to happen. No, having made the parameters of this object lesson quite clear, Cavallone insisted on dancing attendance on her, twisting himself in his seat to pepper her with questions since the kids were more or less preoccupied with Hayato. (At least her brother was looking less sick at this point, less caught in his own horror show and more like himself, short-tempered and irritated by Kyouko and Yamamoto's attention.) Which was just as well, though she'd still like to shove a poison cookie or three down Cavallone's stupid throat for his carelessness. Goddamn it, Reborn had trained Cavallone better than that.

But since the kids were busy, it was up to Bianchi to answer Cavallone's questions about the shrine they were going to visit. "I don't know," she said when he asked her what sort of shrine it was, and "I don't know," when he wanted to know whether she'd been there before. "It won't be too crowded, no," when he asked whether there would be many people there with them. There wouldn't, of course; she and Reborn and then Romario had vetted the sites of these excursions carefully. No sense in exposing two Families to unnecessary risks, of course. The ordinary kind of unnecessary risk, at any rate. The Reborn kind of unnecessary risk was unavoidable.

Cavallone smiled at her then, all white teeth and tanned skin and affable charm. "Oh, doesn't that sound nice? Practically romantic, even."

Bianchi fantasized about punching his teeth down his throat and let that be the source of her smile. "Do you really think so? The thought hadn't even occurred to me."

"No?" Cavallone waited a beat before he added, "What a pity."

"I find that I have quite enough to think about without mooning over the romantic potential of the architecture," Bianchi said.

He just laughed, the bastard, looking quite honestly amused. "That _is_ a pity. Mooning is great fun."

"I'm sure you would know best," Bianchi retorted, as lightly as she could manage and conscious that the kids had let their own conversation lapse so they could listen and watch. "Isn't that your specialty?"

"I do have a knack for it," he agreed, easily enough. "It's one of the few things I'm really good at."

He lied beautifully, really. And well. Bianchi just hoped that Kyouko was taking good notes.

 

Dino had to step quickly to be able to place himself so that he could hand the girls down from the SUV, since they seemed perfectly willing to follow the Poison Scorpion's lead in doing it for themselves. Romario made faces at him for it, but what was life without a little risk? Besides which, some things happened on autopilot once he was in full social butterfly mode, and being gentlemanly about getting the door for ladies was one of those things.

Tsunako blinked at him when he offered her a hand, looking more baffled than anything else. Kyouko took his hand with a calm smile, as if she had expected it all along, and Dino filed that away to talk over with Romario later. If Reborn had allowed the Vongola heir to collect these people around her, there had to be a reason for it. They'd certainly closed ranks around the Smoking Bomb quickly enough during the drive out to this shrine.

But that would be for later. For now, he looked at the wooded hills around them, all bare of leaves, and let his mouth run off for a bit about how charming it all looked while he stretched out his back and Romario and the Poison Scorpion swept the area for potential problems. When they nodded to each other, Dino beamed and looked around the little parking lot. "So where is this shrine?" he asked, even as he sidled towards the Poison Scorpion, as if he couldn't see the perfectly obvious gates or the steps rising up beyond them.

Kyouko was the one who stepped forward, social director or tour guide style, and pointed. "This way," she said. She'd been the one who had generated most of the ideas for these excursions, for that matter. It was interesting, to be sure, since Tsunako had deferred to that direction willingly enough.

"Oh, I see! Fantastic, lead on, and all that." Dino fell into step with the Poison Scorpion, which meant falling back as Romario took point for the group.

The Poison Scorpion acted as if she hadn't noticed him, though Dino didn't buy that for a second, and followed after the kids. She searched the surrounding trees with her gaze, either expecting assailants to come pouncing out of them or hoping for it. Dino couldn't tell which. 

So much for her being amenable to playing along with this lesson for Tsunako's benefit. Even Romario couldn't be right all the time, Dino supposed.

He comforted himself with the thought of the Cizeta crumbling under the combined pressure of the Cavallone and the Vongola, and made shocked sounds at the prospect of the steep steps leading up to the shrine. "Good Lord, would you look at those." He eyed the narrow, steep rise of the stone staircase and offered his elbow to Bianchi. "May I? Those look a bit treacherous."

If he were any judge at all—and he thought he was—the Poison Scorpion's first impulse was to tell him exactly what he could do with that elbow, but she managed a smile, one like razors in candy floss, and said, "Oh, I think it would be better if you didn't. It would be terrible if you forgot to mind yourself while you were trying to attend to me." 

Then she all but danced up the steps ahead of him to catch up with the kids while he tried to decide whether that had been only a threat or also a veiled reference to the clumsiness of his teenaged years.

The things he did for Reborn, Dino reflected, and began the climb up those steps with a sigh and the knowledge that it was going to be a _long_ afternoon.

 

"You don't seem to be laughing this evening," Reborn said once they had compared notes about the afternoon's expedition, which had mostly involved a lot of Cavallone wittering on like an idiot and Bianchi deflecting his attempts to be solicitous of her person.

Bianchi shrugged, trusting that Reborn would see it, or sense it, or infer it. Whatever. "I suppose the reality of it is sinking in." That was better than any other answer she might make, given Reborn's tolerance for whining or anything like whining. His lack of tolerance, rather. "Can tell it's been a while since Cavallone's spent much time with you, though." 

"Oh?"

"He's a lot more confident these days." Bianchi leaned her head against the bole of the tree, choosing her words and tone carefully. "Very sure of his place in the world these days."

"That was the general goal," Reborn murmured, with a thoughtful edge to the words. "He's the head of a Family, after all."

"Yeah," Bianchi said. "I think he's definitely figured _that_ out. Well done, mission accomplished, all that."

Reborn made an interested sound. "You don't sound as if you think the mission is accomplished."

"I'm biased," Bianchi said, not bothering to keep her tone from going flat. "He greeted me as 'Miss Falco' today." It still stung, even now—her former name and everything it had once meant. Everything she'd walked away from, with good reason, and everything she'd surrendered in so doing. "The point definitely went to _his_ side. At least it gives me plenty of motivation for the role I'm playing in this lesson." Stupid, smug Cavallone and his condescending face—not if he were the _last_ man on earth. She'd throw in with Kyouko before she'd succumb to Cavallone's blandishments.

"Hm," Reborn said, and that was all.

Bianchi didn't smile, though she was tempted to, content as she was that she had planted a seed in Reborn's mind.

 

The presence of the Smoking Bomb among Tsunako's entourage was easy enough to explain—like the Poison Scorpion, he had clearly been retained to guard the Ninth's heir. He did it well, too, from what Dino had observed, continuing to put himself between Tsunako and anyone from the Cavallone whenever they met. "I think it's more than just another job for him," Dino said after another day of squiring the kids around, this time to view a late Tokugawa-period castle, and flirting with the Poison Scorpion, who was even less impressed with him than a real scorpion would have been and had no end of chilly methods of repressing his attempts to make up to her.

"Mm." Romario ruminated on that and nodded. "It does seem that way."

Dino shook his head; it wasn't his Family or his problem, thank God for that, though he supposed that as long as Reborn worked for the Ninth, the Ninth could rest assured that even the messiest of problems wouldn't trouble him for long.

Takeshi made sense as well, once Giulio brought the news that CEDEF had once had an agent by the name of Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, who had retired to be with his wife and infant son. If Reborn wanted to see Takeshi started in his father's footsteps, this was a fine way of accomplishing it.

What Dino _couldn't_ make sense of, what had stymied Romario as well, were the girls. Kyouko and Haru, both completely ordinary and yet apparently cognizant that their dear friend Tsunako was a mafia princess.

"Maybe they're there to help Tsunako make the transition?" he suggested, though with a number of doubts, because he had trouble seeing Reborn being that gentle or generous. But Tsunako _was_ a girl. Maybe that made the difference (God in heaven knew that Reborn hadn't bothered being gentle with him).

"Maybe," Romario said, sounding especially uncertain. "But it doesn't seem at all like Reborn."

"No, it doesn't." Dino closed the folder on Tsunako's circle of friends and bodyguards, frowning back at his right hand. "I think we have to assume that there's more to it than what we can see. Keep working on them, will you?"

"Of course, Boss." Romario nodded and even pretended that he hadn't been planning to do that anyway. How old would his girls have been by this point? Fourteen—no, a little older. Seventeen, maybe even eighteen. God, the time went fast. "How are you progressing with Miss Bianchi?"

They were alone in his office, so Dino permitted himself to make the face. "Thank _God_ this is only for Tsunako's benefit," he said while Romario chuckled. "You know, every time I open my mouth, I swear she comes up with a new way to kill me. I bet she has a list that she's keeping somewhere." Sometimes he thought of Romeo Vieri and raised a glass to the man's sheer brass.

"A list? Really, Boss." Romario gave him a look filled with disapproval. "She would never be that sloppy. Reborn trained her."

"Thank you for that vote of confidence, Romario. I appreciate it, truly I do."

Romario spread his hands and shrugged. "She's a hitman, boss. You know that as well as I do. I fully expect she has ideas about how she might kill all of us. That doesn't mean that she isn't a charming young lady in her own right."

Dino elected not to address that. Romario had always been softer on the Poison Scorpion than had made sense, but then, one had to make allowances. "I'm afraid I have to take your word for it."

Romario huffed through his mustache and favored Dino with a long, serious look. "You cannot assume that Miss Bianchi is from the same mold as the women you normally spend your time with." Such was Romario's skill that all his opinions regarding Dino's previous dalliances came through that perfectly clearly. "Nor is she truly from the same mold as the daughters of the other Families. To treat her as if she were is a mistake. You will need to remember that if you wish to get anywhere with her."

"I'll remember that if I ever lose my mind and decide to commit suicide by cyanide soufflé," Dino told him, amused. "Honestly, Romario. Have you forgotten that I'm not actually trying to entice the Poison Scorpion into bed?"

Romario sighed through his mustache. "If you're going to do something for show, you should do it well."

"And I _am_ doing it well," Dino retorted. "Reborn wants the kids to see what men and women in the mafia do. Well?" He raised his eyebrows. "What am I doing that's out of line with that?"

Romario sighed again. "A fair point. Shall we move on, Boss?"

"We might as well," Dino agreed, since they'd exhausted that topic pretty thoroughly. "It sounds like the Momofukai might be responsive, don't you think?"

 

The problem, as Dino was quickly coming to see, was that Namimori was a quiet little town, and the kids were—well, they were _kids_. It made perfect sense that Sawada Iemitsu would have removed his family to Namimori, because it was a sheltered place, very remote from the affairs of the mafia and therefore a very safe place for the Vongola heir and next boss to grow up, which was all fine and good, but for the fact that Dino was used to a bit more excitement in his life. And as useful as it was to have this chance to size up the Vongola Tenth and to court her friendship, there were only so many temples he cared to visit and only so many landmarks he could make enthusiastic noises over before boredom got the better of him, even _with_ the diversion of flattering the Poison Scorpion outrageously and keeping tally of the ways she had of ignoring him or outright rebuffing his advances. (The best was when he came up with something so over the top that even she had to smile a little even while she was delivering yet another rejection. Sometimes, when he considered how much fun it might have been to have her playing along, he was almost sorry that they'd gotten off to the rough start.)

He just hoped the kids were taking notes and that none of this made it back home. He had appearances to keep, after all.

The winter sun was sitting on the horizon when Tsunako called an end to another day's excursion—this time to a rather nice little museum of antiquities that had bored Takeshi, fascinated Haru and the Smoking Bomb, and diverted the rest of them to varying degrees. Romario and the Poison Scorpion had come to an accommodation: she whisked Tsunako away and they let her get the kid at least ten minutes away before trying to leave. It was a polite fiction—finding out where Sawada Nana and Tsunako lived wouldn't have been all _that_ challenging for the Cavallone—but on such polite fictions rested the foundations of civilized society. Dino was perfectly willing to tarry a little longer in the gift shop regardless and was playing with the toy replicas, when Romario stiffened and cleared his throat.

The Smoking Bomb had come back, and his expression was grim as he threaded his way through the racks of replica swords and posters and curios to plant himself in front of Dino. "I'd like a word with you," he announced, jaw set at a pugnacious angle. "Man to man."

Dino resisted his first impulse (to point out that he was very sure that the Smoking Bomb wasn't even shaving yet) and said, "Shall we step outside?"

"That would be good, yeah." The Smoking Bomb turned and marched back out of the shop as Dino exchanged glances with Romario and followed.

Dino wondered whether he'd done something that the Smoking Bomb felt impugned Tsunako's honor as they made for a little corner of the plaza outside the museum. He couldn't think of what he might have done, but even an afternoon's observation was more than enough to show that the Smoking Bomb was devoted to Tsunako and more protective of her than Dino would have expected of a hired hitman-cum-bodyguard. What Dino hadn't yet figured out was _why_ Tsunako had inspired such devotion.

The Smoking Bomb planted himself in that secluded nook and immediately reached for a cigarette, making Romario tense up.

Dino gestured at him to stand down, doubting that even a hotheaded hitman like the Smoking Bomb would try to kill him in so public a place. "What was it you wanted to say to me?"

The Smoking Bomb folded an arm across his chest, gripping the opposite elbow as he took a drag on his cigarette. "So do you just not know how to take a hint or what?" he demanded. His voice was hard. Angry. "Or do you just not care?"

Dino deliberately waited, counting off a solid five seconds before allowing himself to respond to that. "I'm afraid you'll have to give me a little more to work with than that. Care about _what_ , precisely?" No sense in playing dumb and frivolous with the Smoking Bomb, who clearly didn't buy it for a second and knew better anyway. The hitmen always did.

The Smoking Bomb scowled. "My sister." He all but bit the words out. "She's not interested in you." The _you asshole_ was implicit in the tone and twist of his mouth. "She's done everything but taken out a billboard to make that clear, but apparently you haven't noticed that, so let me help. Leave her alone. She's not interested. If you can't keep it in your pants, then find someone else to bother."

Romario's posture turned stiffer with every word the Smoking Bomb uttered, and Dino had to bite his tongue to keep the first outraged retort he wanted to make behind his teeth—how _dare_ the Smoking Bomb imply that he'd press his attentions on someone who had made her disinterest clear? Or that he'd need to do such a thing?—and forced himself to consider the context and what he knew of Reborn. It still took a considerable effort to keep his voice even when he said, "I am quite aware of that, thank you. If you had spoken to your sister, you would know that this is nothing more than an elaborate game of charades."

The Smoking Bomb narrowed his eyes. "Explain."

He wasn't dealing with another Family's hired hitman here. He was dealing with a pissed-off brother, so Dino forced himself to make an allowance for that peremptory command. "Reborn wanted a demonstration of flirtatious behavior for the Vongola heir. The Poison Scorpion and I are obliging him."

The Smoking Bomb took a drag on his cigarette, still scowling. "He didn't say anything to us."

"Reborn doesn't generally share his plans with anyone unless he thinks it's strictly necessary," Dino retorted.

The Smoking Bomb frowned, but that seemed to resonate with him. "So this is all just a show," he said, testing the words.

"Of course it's just a show," Dino snapped, nettled by how little the Smoking Bomb seemed to think of him. "What kind of man do you think I am?"

The Smoking Bomb just gave him a look that was too old for his years. "You're not a hitman," he said. "You don't know how it can be. And it's not like she can just kill _you_ if you won't take _no_ for an answer." He took another drag of his cigarette, looking away from them both. HIs jaw was still tight. "And it's not like Reborn said anything to the rest of us, so all I had to go off of is what I could see." He glanced at Dino, looking him over, then shook his head. "Sorry. I misunderstood. Forget I said anything."

"It's already forgotten," Dino said, as graciously as he could manage that particular polite fiction. "I'll see you tomorrow, I assume?"

"Yeah," the Smoking Bomb said. "I guess." He dipped a clipped nod at them both and walked away.

Dino waited until he was out of sight to slam his fist against his palm and swear. "That little _asshole_."

Romario's response was more measured. "He's very young, in some ways."

"Young. Yeah." Dino ran a hand over his face, thinking. "And lucky I'm willing to overlook that." Even if it had been done for the sake of his sister… "Why the hell didn't he just say something to her first?"

Romario made a sound, noncommittal. "That does seem peculiar." He paused for a moment, then added, "They do seem to have a strained relationship. More so than is usual than for siblings of that age."

That was something he'd have to defer to Romario's experience on. "Yeah." Dino glanced at his watch. "Guess I'll have to mention it to her myself." Wouldn't do for an ally to have that kind of hole in her ranks, especially not with someone as volatile as the Smoking Bomb. "Let's get out of here, eh?"

"The car's already on the way, Boss," Romario said, so Dino let go of his irritation in favor of that.

 

Bianchi checked the time when she arrived at the rendezvous point and found only Cavallone and Romario there, but no, she was precisely on time—so where were the kids? She'd barely had time for the sharp stab of unease to lance through her when a text from Reborn appeared on her phone. _Running late_ , it said. _ETA 10 minutes._

She exhaled, relieved, and slid the phone back into her pocket. Not trouble after all, just scheduling issues. That left her alone with Cavallone, but if she could weather his smarm in company, then ten minutes of privacy wouldn't be unbearable. She didn't have to play by the rules if the kids weren't around.

Cavallone's bright, empty-headed smile vanished off his face when he saw that she was alone. "You're on your own?" He looked a lot less irritating without the stupid grin.

"The kids are running late." Bianchi took up a spot against the wall, one that would let her see both directions down the street, and nodded to Romario, who smiled back. "Should be ten minutes."

"Ah. Actually, that's good. I needed to speak with you about something." Cavallone tucked his own phone back into his pocket and straightened out of his slouch. "Were you aware that your brother doubled back to speak to me the other day?"

Hayato had doubled back…? Bianchi blinked, thinking that over—Hayato had said there was an errand he'd needed to run, had split off from their group after the museum trip. That must have been when he'd done it. "No, as a matter of fact, I didn't know." God damn it, what kind of bug had gotten into Hayato's head _now_?

"I thought he might not have." Cavallone looked serious for a change, like the boss he was purported to be. Compared to the gangling, clumsy idiot he'd used to be, it was a marked improvement. Reborn did good work. "Someone had better speak to him about confronting allied Families with half-baked intelligence."

Oh, _fuck._ "What did he do?" Bianchi did her best not to groan it, but honestly, Hayato wasn't _sane_ when it came to protecting Tsunako, he really wasn't, and he still hadn't resigned himself to Cavallone's presence so near her. "God, I'm sorry, he's _really_ touchy about Tsunako—"

She stopped at the flicker of Cavallone's puzzlement. "Tsunako didn't come up," he said. "It was more of a personal conversation than that. Perhaps someone should remind him to check in with his employers before making accusations. Especially if one of his employers is Reborn."

Bianchi stared at Cavallone, trying to decipher that. Of all the times for the man to demonstrate _subtlety_ …! "What was it that he said to you?" 

Cavallone frowned. "It seemed that he didn't realize what kind of lessons you and I are demonstrating for Tsunako."

The implication was plain, but Bianchi stared at Cavallone's stony expression (he was still miffed over whatever Hayato had said to him, obviously) and had trouble reconciling it with the thought of Hayato doing something like that for her. Of all people. She and Hayato could manage a civil conversation these days, but total strangers could generally manage _that_. "I… see," she said, carefully, since Cavallone didn't need to know how very shocking that was. It was personal, anyway, except for the intersection with Family business. "I apologize. I had been under the impression that Reborn would be briefing him on that. Apparently Reborn changed his mind."

Some of the chill went out of Cavallone's eyes, replaced by resignation, maybe, or curiosity. "Of course he did. And if we ask him for a reason for that, he'll just tell us it was a test." He shook his head. "I think he just likes playing with people's minds." Yes, that was definitely resignation.

"He would say that he's doing you a favor," Bianchi found herself saying. "He's teaching you not to let yourself be a victim of mind games."

Cavallone's laugh was short, almost like a bark. "Hah! Yes, that does sound like something he'd say." He shook his head again. "Talk to the Smoking Bomb. It seems like he might be more vulnerable to those games than the other kids."

She couldn't really disagree with that, and settled for making a neutral noise in her throat as a reply. That earned her half a smile, then Romario cleared his throat, breaking in. "Is that them?"

"Ahead of schedule," Bianchi said, drawing the goggles down from their perch on top of her head and settling them into place while Cavallone tucked away all his serious edges and turned into the blond social butterfly right before her eyes. He turned that vacuous smile on her again and offered his arm. "Shall we go meet them?"

Bianchi ignored him and stalked off to meet the kids without him. She was going to have to speak to Reborn; this game had gone on for long enough, surely.

 

Reborn only said, "Didn't I tell him what was going on? How careless of me, I must have forgotten."

Bianchi took that to mean that he had had his own agenda and made a face at him over it. "It's not nice to leave your partner in the dark," she reminded him, for all the good that was likely to do her. 

"Don't worry, you're doing just fine," he assured her, as though her performance of her role in whatever little drama he was directing was her only concern. In fairness, she supposed it technically was.

Which provided an opening, after a fashion. "How much longer do you expect this to go on, Reborn?"

He didn't answer, not right away, and not directly once he did speak. "I think I'll have him join us this weekend. That will be useful, don't you think?"

"I think you're going to do whatever you've already made up your mind to do, whatever I have to say about it." And it sounded like they weren't done with Cavallone yet, either.

"Was there something that you wanted to say?"

"Nothing worth saying," she said after a moment to consider it. There were plenty worse duties in the world compared to this one. "Are you going to tell me what you've cooked up for the weekend?"

"And ruin the surprise?" Reborn did a good imitation of shocked; Bianchi awarded him full credit for it. "Don't be ridiculous." 

Bianchi shook her head and assumed that whatever it was he had up his sleeves, it would be something elaborate and only fitting considering the fact that he had all his students in one place.

 

"Camping," Dino said, blankly, when he and Romario presented themselves at the appointed place and time, per Reborn's instructions. (Romario had said, "It's like they think you have nothing else to do, Boss," which was a pretty severe complaint for Romario.) "We're going camping. In this weather?" The sky overhead was grey with low, scudding clouds, a clear reminder that though January was drawing to its close, winter was not yet over.

The kids were a study: Tsunako heaved a sigh and looked resigned. Takeshi was grinning, looking like the prospect of going camping in cold weather was all good fun. The Smoking Bomb didn't have much expression at all, though he kept glaring Dino's way anytime he thought no one was watching him.

Reborn, that diabolical creature, just smiled at them all from his perch on Takeshi's shoulder. "Camping. It will be a Vongola endurance trial."

"Oh my God," Dino said, because it was _never_ a good sign when Reborn started invoking Family names and ascribing traditions to them. He still had nightmares about the Cavallone survival contest and he was pretty sure Romario was saving the pictures of the Cavallone cooking challenge for a special occasion. 

Before he could school himself—he was supposed to be full of useless, fribbling chatter and not presentiments of doom—Tsunako smiled at him, more self-assured than he'd seen her before. _I know,_ her smile said, full of fellow-feeling. _I know_ exactly _what you mean. And we both know that resistance is futile, don't we?_

And of course, trying to weasel out of it _was_ going to be useless. Not that Dino planned on letting that stop him. "Er, Reborn," he said, recovering some of his equanimity and casting about for some way of escaping. "This is really a charming idea, but I think I may need to decline—we were expecting a rather important phone call this afternoon—"

"Which is why you have a right hand, of course," Reborn said, serene. "Romario will be staying behind."

Dino looked at Romario, who looked apologetic and shrugged—betrayal from his most trusted Family member. "Et tu, Romario?" Dino asked him, reproachful, though that did explain why Romario had taken the time to make sure he was dressed warmly before they'd set out.

"It's just one night, Boss," Romario told him.

"I hope that's what you put on my tombstone after I've been eaten by bears," Dino muttered.

"Does Japan even have bears?" the Poison Scorpion asked, sounding far too amused about the whole thing.

"I bet they do _now_ ," Tsunako said, which sounded just about right to Dino, because he frankly would not have put it past Reborn to import a few bears to make a point.

"Can't we go camping at a hotel?" he tried, even as Reborn ordered him to divest himself of his phone—there would be no calling for help or pizza, apparently. "I know a nice four-star hotel. It'll be very rustic!"

"You've got to be the only man in the world would call a four-star hotel _rustic_ ," the Poison Scorpion said, rolling her eyes and shoving a backpack at him.

"Well, it _is_ ," Dino countered, watching Romario retreat to the car and wishing he had the balls to run after him. Reborn would only chase him down if he tried it, though, and "If you compare them to the five-star hotels, the difference is clear."

"I'll take your word for it," she said, shouldering her own pack.

The teasing reply came almost automatically; since he could flirt practically in his sleep and was preoccupied with thoughts of the ordeal ahead. "Why do that? I could show you the difference."

It had been the wrong thing to say—their pretend courtship hadn't ever reached the level of a blatant proposition—and Dino saw that he'd overstepped himself when her expression froze for a split-second. Then she said, chilly as the wind coming down off the mountain, "I don't believe I heard that correctly."

Damn. Just when she'd begun to thaw out, too. "Sorry, it came out badly," he said, lightly because Tsunako was watching and the Smoking Bomb wasn't even pretending not to scowl. "I meant that we could try out a hotel instead of camping. All of us. A Cavallone luxury trial."

"That sounds better than a Vongola endurance test," Tsunako said, wistful, while the Poison Scorpion turned away from him and faced up the mountainside. 

"Out of the question," Reborn said, which ended the conversation. "Let's go, we're wasting time."

Dino resigned himself to his fate and hoisted the backpack onto his shoulders and staggered—mugging for the kids, mostly. "God, what's in here, rocks?" he asked while Reborn waved a hand at Tsunako and she set off, making her way up the trail that led off into the trees.

The Poison Scorpion just rolled her eyes at him again and waved him ahead of her.

 

Reborn encouraged them to race each other up the side of the mountain by means of announcing that the Poison Scorpion would be doing the cooking herself unless someone managed to get to their projected camp site ahead of her (Dino pulled ahead of the Smoking Bomb at the very end of their pell-mell scramble up the trail, probably because the Smoking Bomb, well, smoked too much). Tsunako and Takeshi kept pace with them, even though they looked a little puzzled by their panic—clearly, Dino thought, bracing himself with his hands on his knees and panting for breath, clearly they had never experienced a bad bout of food poisoning.

Actually, that Takeshi had kept up wasn't surprising—athlete, it made sense—but he wouldn't have thought it of Tsunako, unassuming as she was.

Reborn bounced down from Takeshi's shoulder and came over to kick Dino's ankle. "You've gotten out of condition." He frowned up at Dino, disapproval radiating off him. "I thought I trained you better than that."

"It's been a busy quarter, Reborn, c'mon." Between the Cizeta and the Frentani, not to mention the upheaval between the Vongola and Cetrulli… who had time to stay in perfect condition?

Reborn was as impressed by that as he ever was by excuses, which was to say not at all. "You're going to give me a bad name," he sniffed. Then he clapped his hands. "All right, it's time to begin the Vongola endurance challenge."

"Begin?" Dino echoed, and oh yeah, he remembered this from the Reborn Years, how Reborn piled challenge on top of challenge, always asking for more whether a guy had anything left to give or not.

The Poison Scorpion rolled her eyes—he remembered that, too, the way she was perpetually unimpressed. "Just like old times," she said, dropping her pack and stretching her back, fists pressed to the small of it. "I thought you would have grown out of the whining stage by now, Cavallone."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said while Reborn marshaled the kids and began explaining the completely arbitrary, semi-sadistic rules of the Vongola endurance challenge. There was going to be more running, Dino could see it coming, and some more climbing, and probably fighting something, knowing Reborn (bears; Dino was betting on bears). The Poison Scorpion, he couldn't help noticing, didn't have to take part in any of this nonsense—she got to be the referee along with Reborn.

The winter air was brisk, but by the time they broke for lunch (bento from her mother, Tsunako informed him when he asked), Dino was sweaty and already grubby, thanks to a slick path and a tumble downslope.

So much for being the third most powerful boss in the mafia, anyway.

 

"Oh my God," Dino said, "You do realize I was _joking_ about the bears, right?" Not that this was a bear, exactly. Wrong branch of the animal kingdom's tree for that, though he supposed a giant rampaging reptile was in keeping for Japan. He danced back out of its way, keeping himself between Tsunako and the snapping turtle (where had Reborn found a _snapping turtle_ the size of an SUV, anyway?).

"Yeah, thanks for giving Reborn that idea," Tsunako said, sounding more resigned than anything else.

"I don't think he really needed the help," the Poison Scorpion said, hands full of poison cooking. "It's probably not Cavallone's fault."

"That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me." Dino grimaced as the giant rampaging turtle menaced the boys, who were trapped on the other side of the clearing. It was apparently more annoyed by the Smoking Bomb's explosives and Takeshi's bat-cum-katana than deterred. Reborn, not surprisingly, had found a nice tree branch from which to observe the proceedings. 

"Yeah, well, don't get used to it," the Poison Scorpion said. She hissed through her teeth as the turtle lunged for her brother, who dove out of the way while the thing closed its jaw on a fallen tree instead. The log splintered dramatically. "Okay, what's the plan?"

"Not getting eaten?" Dino suggested at the same time Tsunako said, "Well, we have to stop it."

Right. Technically Tsunako was the student here, wasn't she? "Right," Dino said, deferring to that reality while the turtle crunched the log to pieces. "Any ideas on how we stop a fifteen-foot snapping turtle of doom?"

"Call out the army and let _them_ handle it?" Tsunako said.

The turtle, having reduced the log to so much kindling, began to turn its ponderous weight in search of a new target, but by that point the boys had gotten clear of it and were circling around behind it to regroup with the rest of them. 

"Think it might take the army a little while to get here," Takeshi said. "Sorry, Sawada-chan."

"That's what I was afraid of." Tsunako made a small squeaking noise as the turtle managed to turn and caught sight of them. 

"I could see if I could get it to swallow a bomb," the Smoking Bomb offered. "That might slow it down."

Dino, who had been about to suggest that now would be a good time to shoot the thing, shut his mouth at the look on Tsunako's face. "Do we _have_ to kill it?" she asked, keeping a wary eye on it. "Can't we just—immobilize it?"

Dino regretfully left his Beretta in his shoulder holster. "Maybe I can be of assistance?" he said, uncoiling his whip instead and ignoring Takeshi's little crow of laughter. ("He really does use a whip!") "I can probably do something about its jaws, at least."

Presumably Reborn would have told him if he weren't supposed to lend a hand when necessary.

Tsunako looked at him—really looked at him, giving him the most peculiar sense that he was being sized up and assessed by a middle-schooler—before she nodded. "Should we make a distraction?" she asked, even as the turtle lumbered forward, madness glittering in its eyes.

"That would be good, yeah, Dino agreed, uncoiling his whip and studying the turtle.

"Right. Gokudera." That was all she said, though it seemed to be enough. The Smoking Bomb sighed and snapped out a bracket of bombs that exploded against the thing's shell. Dino didn't think they'd done any real damage, but the thing hissed and turned in search of that irritation, extending its neck as far as it could go and snapping at the air.

"You know, I really thought these days were behind me," Dino announced, just because it was worth saying, and sighted carefully before cracking the whip. The weighted end of it whistled through the air and wrapped around the turtle's… jaw? Muzzle? Snout? What was the proper terminology for doom-turtle physiology, anyway? And really, why did his life include these kinds of questions?

The turtle didn't like having its jaws wound round with the end of his whip and reared its head back as far as it would go—not very far, but it was enough to drag Dino a step forward. He staggered against the pull and planted his feet wider, bracing them and hauling on the whip. "Okay, guys, what's the rest of the plan?"

"Flip it over?" Takeshi suggested as the turtle lumbered closer and Dino hauled up the slack in his whip. "They can't do much on their backs, right?"

"Oh, _God_ ," Tsunako said, sounding appalled and resigned all at once. "Okay, c'mon, let's get this over with."

Heh. He remembered saying that an awful lot himself in his day. And complaints notwithstanding, she moved into action readily enough—like she really had decided that if it had to be done, there was no point in delaying the inevitable. The boys went with her, circling around the side of the turtle and keeping clear of its clawed feet (flippers? No, they looked more like feet) and getting their hands under the edge of the shell.

The turtle didn't seem to notice their efforts and scrabbled forward, apparently intent on dealing with the thing restricting its jaws, until the rocking efforts the kids were making caught its attention. By then it was too late. The kids got it up off the ground, their faces red with the effort, and as the turtle flailed its feet in the air, momentum took over and did the rest.

It looked a lot less terrifying with all four feet waving madly in the air.

"Right," Tsunako said, breathing hard and staring at it. "That was something I never thought I'd have to do." She dusted her hands off. " _Now_ what do we do?"

"Make turtle soup to feed an army?" Dino suggested, watching it thrashing around and rocking on the curve of its shell. He wasn't the only one watching that; after a moment, the Smoking Bomb stooped and picked up a rock and busied himself with wedging it under the turtle's shell.

"We can't just kill it," Tsunako protested.

Dino didn't see why not, since it had seemed pretty eager to do that to them. Before he could say so, Reborn said, "That won't be necessary. It will resume its normal size shortly."

" _Another_ special bullet?" Tsunako groaned as Reborn descended from his perch in the tree.

"Of course." Reborn clapped his hands together. "Now for the Vongola tent-building challenge!"

At least, Dino thought, his was not the only groan to meet that announcement.

 

"So," Tsunako said later—much later, after they had wrestled the tents up and pooled their collective vocabularies of profanity; Dino didn't know how he felt about knowing that he'd taught the Vongola Tenth to say things like _cocksucking bastard son of a ratfaced whore_ in three different languages, but neither Reborn nor Bianchi had tried to stop him, so it must have been sort of okay—and after they'd put together a fire and delegated all the cooking to Takeshi, such cooking as it was, with things out of packets—after that, Tsunako looked up from her packet of reconstituted noodles and said, wistful, "So tell me more about that four-star hotel, Dino-san?"

He was thinking of that hotel himself, rather sadly, because the night air was cold in spite of the fire and he was pretty sure the ground was going to be even colder. And harder. Lots harder. "Another weekend, maybe, to make up for this one. No giant snapping turtles, either."

"Someone else will handle that lesson," Reborn said. "Besides, shouldn't you be getting home soon?"

Jesus. That was harsher than he'd expected it to be. Dino cleared his throat and smiled, vague and well-meaning. "Oh, I dunno. Romario makes noises like I should, but home can soldier on without me. Not like I need to supervise every last little thing." God forbid that he should let the Cavallone get to that state again.

Reborn just snorted. "Stop being so lazy and get back to work. You've clearly been slacking too much." 

Welp. So that was that. Lovely. Dino smiled across the campfire at Tsunako. "Ah, well. A raincheck, then. Or better, you can come and visit sometime, the next time you're in Italy. I'll throw a party, it'll be fantastic." At least the Smoking Bomb looked pleased at the prospect of seeing the back of him. Which reminded him. "Though I am going to miss the sight of your lovely face, Miss Bianchi."

"I find that hard to believe," she said, not looking up from where she was stirring the fire. 

Dino laid his hand over his heart. "You wound me."

"I _wish_ ," she muttered. And so much for society manners, though perhaps there wasn't any need for those now that Reborn had called for an end to the lesson. 

But never let it be said that a Cavallone was not gracious. Dino smiled at her, bright and sweet. "Another time for that too, maybe." 

At least it made her snort.

 

It was late—very late, well past the time for Tsunako to have fallen asleep. Bianchi could hear at least one set of snores coming from the boys' tent, in fact. But Tsunako wasn't asleep; she shifted in her sleeping bag from time to time. Bianchi assumed that it was because of the hardness of the ground or the presences of a rock—she had a bit of knobbly root poking her own shoulder and could sympathize—but eventually Tsunako said, quiet, "Bianchi-san?"

"Yeah, kiddo?" Wasn't like she was asleep either, after all.

Tsunako's sleeping bag rustled; Bianchi's night vision was just good enough to see that Tsunako had wriggled around to look her way. "Why did Cavallone-san really come to Japan?" Her voice was quiet in the darkness.

"Reborn invited him." That was the reward; when Tsunako asked the right questions, she got the answers to them that were true. "Why do you ask?"

"He looked funny when Reborn asked him whether he didn't have things to do at home. Italy, I mean. Like he was surprised. Or sad, or something." Tsunako didn't sound hesitant. Generally she didn't when she was unpacking some bit of intuition, though she hadn't noticed herself doing things like that yet. "But it seemed a little strange, if he's only here to meet me and have a vacation. He's not, is he?"

"No, he isn't." Bianchi waited to see whether Tsunako would keep pushing for more.

She did. "If it's not that, then what _is_ he doing here?"

"Some business with the yakuza, but that's mostly a cover." Bianchi paused then, considering the next part carefully. "Reborn thought there might be some things you could learn from him."

"Like what? All he's really done is flirt with you." Tsunako's tone turned dubious. "I don't think I'd be any good with a whip." Bianchi stayed silent, marveling again at the Vongola intuition. Tsunako puzzled through her silence fairly quickly. "You're kidding, right? You have to be."

"Someday you'll have to deal with men flirting and flattering you because they're trying to get something," Bianchi said, as gently as she could. "Reborn felt it would be good for you to see how that works before you have to deal with it."

"Oh my _god_." Tsunako all but moaned it. "That's ridiculous, no one's going to—"

"Yes, they will." Best not to let her delude herself on that score. "For all kinds of reasons, probably. There are plenty of ways to handle it when the time comes, but you should know that sex is just one more weapon for some people." Kyouko already knew that, which was both disturbing and comforting; Haru had a pretty good line on behavioral patterns herself. It was just Tsunako who worried Bianchi.

"I thought… Cavallone-san liked you?" Tsunako ventured, voice small. "That wasn't… real?"

"Cavallone's not for the likes of me," Bianchi said by way of easing into it. "He's the third-ranked Family head, remember. Whenever he gets tired of living the bachelor life, he'll settle down with a respectable wife. One of the nice girls who'll bring him a useful set of political connections or something financially advantageous. Or both. He's much smarter than he looks and acts."

"But… I thought you actually did like him?" Tsunako said, still sounding small and sad.

It was just as well that it was dark; Tsunako couldn't see her grimace. Perhaps the Vongola intuition wasn't all it was cracked up to be after all. "Not the way you mean, kiddo, but I guess he's a likable enough guy. Practically the walking definition of charisma, you know?" Bianchi turned her head away from the dark huddle of Tsunako's sleeping bag, considering it a little bit more. "And he's actually a decent human being. Kept it strictly to flirting. Some guys, they like to throw their weight around, you know? He didn't, which was nice." Which probably she shouldn't have said, since that was the kind of thing that would freak Tsunako out. Oops. "But even if I did like him like that, it doesn't matter. I'm not a nice girl. As I said: he's not for the likes of me."

"Then all that was… it was a set-up? For my benefit?" Tsunako sounded appalled. "You _had_ to do it?"

"Well, yeah?" Bianchi cast about for some way to explain. "Just another part of the job, and it wasn't like it was horrible. Cavallone's nice, like I said. And a gentleman."

Tsunako made a sound, something strangled. Horrified. "What if he hadn't been?"

"You do the job in front of you," Bianchi said. "I'm a hitman, kiddo. I would have managed."

"That's not right," Tsunako whispered. "Bianchi-san, it isn't right. You shouldn't have to do things like that." Her voice lost some of the shaking edge. "You're not going to. Not anymore."

It was touching, but not quite accurate. Bianchi sighed. "But you don't get to make that decision. I'm not your Family. I work for the Ninth. Reborn's the one who's in charge here. If he tells me to flirt with Cavallone so you can see what that looks like, then that's what I'll do."

"What do you mean, you're not my Family?" Tsunako said. "Of course you're my Family!"

Bianchi had to breathe carefully around the sudden aching twist in her chest. "No," she said, very softly. "You haven't asked me to be. We haven't promised any loyalty to each other." Not like Tsunako had done with Takeshi and Hayato, or even with Kyouko and Haru, however implicitly. "I'm a freelancer. The Ninth hired me. I don't have a Family, Tsunako. Not anymore."

"But—I thought you—I'm just a _job_?" Tsunako said, sounding horribly lost.

Bianchi sat up and reached across the little space between their sleeping bags, groping for Tsunako's shoulder. "Hey. You're not just a job," she said fiercely. "You're my friend and my student and I'm so very proud of you. Don't ever think otherwise. But you're also my mission. I have to keep you safe and make sure you know the things you'll need to keep yourself safe. That's what it means to be a hitman. You do your job, no matter what. If you can't do that, you have no business hiring yourself out in the first place." That was what being a hitman meant. Even if it cost your life, or broke your heart, or took everything you had. You did the job in front of you.

"But it was a job at first," Tsunako said after a moment, gone still under Bianchi's hand. "Does that really count?"

"Why shouldn't it?" The air was really too chilly to be sitting up like this without the sleeping bag to ward it off, but Bianchi didn't bother with that. Some things were just more important.

"All this only came about because of the mafia." Tsunako's voice was very quiet. "The only reason any of you are here in the first place is because of that." There was a tone in her voice that Bianchi didn't like, one that she hadn't heard in a long time. So much for assuming that the girl had put away those doubts that had plagued her.

"So what?" Bianchi prodded her shoulder. "You think that's the reason anyone stays? Haven't I taught you any better than that? Money, connections, Family names—they only get you so far. And yeah, that's a pretty big deal. But that's not everything. There are thing that go deeper than the kind of loyalty you can buy for money. Loyalty that doesn't have anything to do with money and has everything to do with who you are and what you stand for. And if that gets started in a hired job, so what? It's still real."

"Is it really?" Tsunako's voice was very small, like a child asking for reassurance that the monsters under the bed weren't there.

"Yeah, it is." Bianchi sighed and squeezed Tsunako's shoulder. "Think of it like this: if it hadn't been for the Vongola, we wouldn't have had the chance to meet you. You know? So maybe that's why we're all here, but that's not really the reason we stick around." She squeezed her shoulder again. "Besides. You think Kyouko or Yamamoto really had any idea what they were signing up for before they jumped in with both feet?"

Tsunako made a surprised sound—yeah, that's what Bianchi had thought. Satisfied, she retreated to the warmth of her sleeping bag and congratulated herself on another crisis averted.

Then Tsunako said, softly, "Bianchi-san? Do you want to be a part of my Family?"

She'd had the breath knocked out of her more times than she could remember or count, and a simple question shouldn't have felt anything like a blow to the solar plexus anyway, but this one did. Bianchi gulped for breath against how much she wanted the shelter and security of having a Family and a place again, all the things she'd surrendered without fully realizing their worth and had tried not to begrudge Hayato now that he'd found them again. "I do want that," she said, once she could manage it. "Believe me, I really do."

"But…?" Tsunako said, quiet.

"But that's secondary right now. First I have to finish this job." Which was more than simply guarding Tsunako as Hayato did. Bianchi took a deep breath. "After the Ninth gets done with me, ask me again, if you still want me. Okay? Because I'll be a free agent then. Until then, I'm not. Do you understand?"

"I don't like it," Tsunako said. "You shouldn't have to do things this way."

Bianchi sighed. "Maybe not. But this is how it works."

"It shouldn't be. There ought to be a better way."

Bianchi snorted softly. "Yeah, well. Feel free to come up with one. But until then, this is what we've got." She turned over, rearranging herself more comfortably. "Now go to sleep, yeah? You're going to have to hike back down this mountain tomorrow morning, remember?"

"Yes, Bianchi-san," Tsunako said, obediently enough. 

Bianchi closed her eyes, prepared to follow her own advice, and didn't say anything at all when Tsunako's quiet, "I'll figure something out. And I _will_ ask again when this is over," floated through the darkness. Everyone thought they could change the world when they were fourteen. All the same, she smiled.

 

The quiet murmur of voices from the girls' tent finally fell silent; Dino thought he heard a sigh from the other side of their tent, from the other side of the contentedly sleeping Takeshi, but he might have been mistaken. Not that he was going to check; if the Smoking Bomb had been listening in on his sister and Tsunako's conversation, that was his own business.

They said eavesdroppers never heard anything good about themselves, though that wasn't really true this time. Though perhaps he'd been damned with faint praise. Dino smiled at the canvas over his head, not without a sense of rueful amusement. So he was a nice enough guy and a gentleman just because he'd done precisely what he'd agreed to do and no more? Christ, what a way to set a high standard. It was enough to make a man wonder just who the Poison Scorpion had been working for before Timoteo had hired her. Or what the hell Romeo of the Vieri had done to deserve his fate.

Likable enough. Charismatic. A gentleman. Faint praise, really, from the likes of Bianchi Falco, who'd once moved in her father's circle and had known plenty of likable, charismatic young men. She'd sounded a lot more moved talking about her loyalty to Tsunako. Talking about loyalty itself, sounding like she really did believe in the old-fashioned way of doing things, just like Reborn did and had taught him to do as well.

Who'd have thought there were still people holding onto those ideals among the hitmen of all people? Especially when she didn't have much reason for it. Hadn't, anyway, until now.

Dino sighed. Reborn really did do the strangest things to their heads. It was a wonder how he did it, for someone who packed more cynicism into the cubic centimeter than anyone else Dino had ever met.

All the same, though: _likable_ enough? Really? Ouch.

 

The problem with camping was not only that it happened out of doors, but that was, perhaps, the _root_ of all camping's many problems. Or something like that. The sun came up awfully early, didn't it? On the other hand, Dino couldn't claim that he was really sleeping when it did—every time he'd tried to drift off, a new rock or root found another place to jab him, so he gave it up as the light of dawn began to creep along the canvas wall of the tent.

He tried not to hate the kids too much for still being sound asleep when he crept out of the tent, though it was difficult when they were both curled up in their sleeping bags and oblivious to the growing light, the chill, or the uneven surface on which they had pitched the tent itself.

He was not the only one awake. Bianchi was bending over the fire, poking among the ashes and stirring up the coals. She glanced up once and nodded, silent, as Dino staggered past, working the kinks out of his back with each lurching step towards the bushes where he might attend to certain necessities. When he returned, stepping through the early morning light quietly and keeping a bleary eye out for Reborn (not that he expected to see him, but it was worth the effort just in case), she had gotten the fire going again and was heating up—

"Is that coffee?" Dino asked, watching her scoop grounds into a pot. It was too early to be anything but honest and he was sure the longing was clear in his voice.

She looked up at him and her mouth quirked. "Of course it's coffee." Her voice was as hushed as the dawn itself; she had her goggles pushed up and resting on the top of her head, and she raised her eyebrows as he shuffled closer to the fire and sat down.

"If I ask you nicely, will you share?" Coffee would go a long, long way towards making the morning more tolerable.

Her eyebrows went even higher. "You want me to share my coffee with you. Really?"

"Yes?" he ventured, raking his fingers through his hair and trying to comb some of the knots out of it. Then he rethought it. "Are you angling for a bribe? I don't really have anything to bargain with, unless you'll take an IOU." He cast a covetous eye on the little coffee pot and the kettle of water which was just beginning to steam.

She shook her head and dropped her gaze towards the fire, stirring the coals again and poking them until the sparks flew. "Seem to recall you racing up a mountain just to be sure I wasn't going to do the cooking."

Well, yes, but—"You wouldn't poison a man's coffee, would you? Not without a good reason first, right?" Dino rubbed his chin, scratching at the stubble there. "Also, if you did that, someone would have to haul my carcass back down the mountain." 

"Could just roll it down the side," Bianchi suggested, mouth curving into the faintest suggestion of a smile.

"Too much work. Better to let me get down under my own power." The little kettle was beginning to steam in earnest; he watched with jealous eyes as she took it off the fire and poured it off into the coffee pot. "Seriously, name your price."

Bianchi glanced at him, sidelong. "Name my price, huh?" She swirled the pot thoughtfully and the scent of the coffee wafted through the air after it. "Thought you were smarter than that, Cavallone."

"You can name whatever price you want. I don't _have_ to agree to it," he pointed out.

"I guess not." She considered that and finally shrugged, depressing the plunger and pouring out the results. She handed the cup across. "Here."

Dino wrapped his fingers around the cup, hot enough to nearly burn them, and watched her pour herself the second cup. He could say a lot of things here, he thought, cradling the precious cup under his chin and inhaling the steam, but he settled on the easiest. "Thanks."

She just raised her own cup in a toast and took a drink; when he followed suit, he sighed in relief. He didn't suppose it was the best coffee he'd ever had, but it was still pretty damn good in comparison to the alternative.

"The boys still asleep?" she asked presently.

"Completely sacked out." He couldn't keep the resentment out of his voice and she grinned. "Where's Reborn?"

She tipped her head toward the other tent. "Catching a nap."

That stood to reason, he supposed. Even the best hitman in the world probably wanted a little shut-eye after spending all night awake. "He have plans for today?"

Bianchi shrugged. "Probably not. They have homework and school tomorrow."

Ah, yes. School. Though that was probably a more normal experience for Tsunako than it might otherwise be. Dino sipped his coffee, thinking about that and how unlike most of the mafia's children she was. Probably by design, that, both Reborn and Timoteo's design. Not a bad thing, either. "It'll be interesting, working with her when she's Tenth." And not in a bad way, either, from the sounds of it, as long as she held onto that idealistic streak he'd overheard. Dino drained his cup of coffee and only then saw the look on Bianchi's face. She didn't seem to know what to say. "What?"

"When Tsunako is Tenth," she repeated, tone as odd as her expression, at least until she bent over the coffee pot and busied herself with brewing another pot. "Of course."

"Well, yeah." Wasn't like it hadn't been done before, he thought, before his sluggish brain kicked in enough to remind him that he was looking at Luciano Falco's oldest child, the daughter of the Family. Huh. Awkward.

She didn't say anything, just went ahead with fixing the coffee, shaking out the grounds from the first pot and measuring out a fresh batch, adding the hot water and swirling the press around. When she lifted her head again, she'd schooled her expression once more. "Another cup?"

"Please," he said, for lack of anything better to say, and for lack of being able to tell whether he'd offended her or dredged up things she didn't care to remember or what. Perhaps that was what she'd meant, telling Tsunako about doing the job in front of her. He passed the cup over to her and watched the steam curl up from the coffee as she poured it.

She looked at him when she passed it back, really looked at him, and for once she didn't seem to be sizing him up for a batch of poison cooking or deciding that he was irrelevant. She was even almost smiling, crooked and wry.

Oh. _Oh._ That was what Romario had meant, Dino thought, accepting his coffee from her and not quite sure what to do with himself or with it.

Bianchi tilted her head. "What?"

Tsunako saved him from having to answer that by coming wandering out of her tent, tousled and yawning. Bianchi's attention immediately swerved to her. "Hey, kiddo," she said, openly fond, as Tsunako stared blearily around herself, the process of her waking up nearly visible as she looked around, taking in the fire and the tents and slotting them into where they belonged in her short-term memory. "…Reborn, right," she sighed, and came closer to the fire, easing herself down.

"Sleep all right?" Bianchi asked her, smiling still as she watched her charge.

"Yeah," Tsunako said vaguely, scrubbing a hand through the short mess of her hair.

Bianchi lifted the kettle off the fire, swished it, and said, "Mm, I need some more water before I can offer you any coffee."

Tsunako just wrinkled her nose. "No, thanks. Don't know how you can stand that stuff."

"It's an acquired taste," Dino said, contriving to make sure that it came out sounding like normal, or very close to normal. He even managed to smile. "Or maybe we've just learned to make a virtue out of necessity."

Tsunako blinked at him, trying to puzzle through that as Bianchi snorted into her own coffee cup and provided the translation. "We need the coffee to function like actual human beings, so we act like it's a good thing."

"Oh. Right." Tsunako rubbed her eyes and yawned. "I guess that makes sense."

"As much sense as anything in this world does," Dino agreed. He smiled at her. "Though maybe you'll want to wait to start drinking coffee for a while longer. It'll stunt your growth. 'S what my father used to say." And Romario not even here to witness him repeating it. Shame.

Tsunako giggled, like he'd meant her too, and Bianchi smiled at him, and oh boy, he was so, _so_ fucked.

 

"I see that you survived the bears," Romario said after Dino had dropped himself into the car and they were pulling away from the kids and their tutors. "Congratulations."

"There weren't any bears," Dino told him, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "But there _was_ a giant snapping turtle the size of a small car. Just for the record."

Romario had been with him long enough that Dino mostly forgave him for the muffled snicker. "I see. I'm sure that was invigorating."

"It was something."

For a moment, there was no other sound but the murmur of the engine and the hum of the tires against pavement. Then Romario asked, all the laughter gone from his voice, "Was there anything else?"

Dino opened his eyes and stared at the roof of the car. "Nothing worth mentioning, really. Oh, but Reborn seems to be done with us for the time being."

"Ah. Shall I begin preparations for the trip home?" Romario sounded serene enough about it.

"Might as well," Dino told him, then thought better of it. "Let's keep the house here, though. In case Reborn changes his mind and so we can keep a line open on our yakuza friends."

"I was just going to suggest that myself." Romario drove in silence for a little while after that. "Was there anything else, Boss?"

"Not that I can think of right now," Dino said. "Except a shower and a nap, maybe."

If Romario could tell he was lying, he didn't say anything about it.

 

"I think that was productive, don't you?" Reborn said after they'd seen the last of Cavallone for the time being.

Bianchi pursed her lips, considering that. "Productive for Tsunako, or for Cavallone?"

"Yes," Reborn said, since he didn't play fair. He smiled, particularly complacent. "What do you think?"

"I guess you made both of them think," Bianchi allowed, since Cavallone had gone away looking unusually pensive. "He thinks she's going to be Tenth, you know." Had assumed it so easily that it was almost shocking. Go figure. But then, Reborn had a way of opening up the mind to strange possibilities.

He made a contented sound. "I know."

Bianchi huffed at him. "Hope someone takes a picture of his face when he finds out."

"You would." Reborn adjusted the angle of his hat. "You did well with Tsunako's offer."

Of course he'd been listening. Bianchi reminded herself that she really should have expected as much. "Yeah, well. You do what you gotta do." 

"Ideally, yes." Reborn adjusted his hat again, glancing at her from beneath the brim. "Ideally, one is rewarded for doing so as well."

"Ideally," Bianchi said, more amused than anything else. "Gonna find a bonus on my next paycheck?"

"Who can say what the future holds?" He shrugged. "But perhaps someday you'll be glad that you kept your options open."

"Right," Bianchi said, rolling her eyes at him. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I know you will," he said serenely. "You always were the most diligent of my students." With that he hopped down from the table and strolled out, leaving Bianchi to wonder just what about Cavallone's mission was supposed to have been productive for _her_.

It had to have been the conversation with Tsunako, she decided, like a practicum of the hitman's creed, else Reborn would not have congratulated her. She nodded, satisfied, checked the time, and went to go meet Hayato for their coffee date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished drafting this section last June, according to my notes; it took me until now to decide that no, really, it's worth posting. *rueful* Sometimes writing is a very strange hobby.


	6. Fuuta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsunako gives Fuuta a delightful new research project.

In the end, the Family left it to him to decide whether he would go or leave the task to another, and Fuuta chose to go himself. After all, he reasoned, was he not Japanese on his father's side? And was he not of an age to seem unthreatening and therefore harmless? He was a good choice for the job, and it was not as if a de la Stella could ever be truly alone, no matter where he went in the world. So long as he was able to reach out to the libro delle stelle, the book of the stars that bound them all to one another, a de la Stella could do very nearly anything. 

Even so, it occurred to Fuuta that perhaps those members of the Family who'd had reservations about his decision—his mother and grandmother not least among them—might have had a point after all. Not that admitting as much was going to do him much good in his present circumstances, but at least it would give his mother and grandmother a moment of vindication later on, once he had a chance to share it with the Family.

The three men in front of him were from the Cocchi, ranked 749th among the mafia Families in terms of strength, 652nd in terms of political influence, and first among the Families in debt to the de la Stella. That last was probably why they were here now, trying to corner him and doing a distressingly competent job of it. There was no time to reach out to the book and do a proper ranking of it, but even so, Fuuta gauged their apparent strength and found it certainly enough to hold him if they caught him. Worse, at least one of them was agile enough to compete with one small boy, no matter how determined that boy might be.

It was probably just as well that Fuuta was ranked twentieth among the children of the mafia in terms of speed, and sixteenth among them in skill at escaping.

"Whatever it is you want, I'm not going to give it to you," he said, edging himself backward one more careful step. "You have to realize that." That was the rule of the de la Stella, the one unbreakable law: one did not allow oneself to be manipulated by the other Families, and one did not betray the secrets of the book, no matter what the cost.

"Don't worry, it's not _you_ who'll be giving us what we want." That was the man on the left, the one with the thickest neck of the three and probably the leader, though not on account of his intelligence. "When your Family realizes we've got you—" He stopped there and smiled unpleasantly, showing off a gap where one of his incisors should have been, and left it to Fuuta to fill in the rest.

That was the Cocchi all over, ranked dead last in terms of intelligence—it was no wonder they kept turning to the de la Stella to supplement that lack, and too bad they didn't understand how to actually make use of the knowledge they purchased. It was almost enough to make Fuuta feel sorry for them. Almost.

The man on the left shifted, readying himself for the grab. Fuuta tensed himself to run, keeping a wary eye on the the one in the middle, apparently the smartest and, unfortunately, most agile of the three.

"I mean it." Fuuta was rather pleased with how calm he sounded. "I'm not going to give you what you want." Not that he thought they would understand that, not unless it all went horribly wrong for him.

"We'll just have to see about that, won't we?" the ringleader said as the one on the right lunged. Fuuta had been waiting for that and threw himself to the side, feinting out of the broad, meaty spread of that one's hands and ducking under the grab the leader made for him. He broke for the gap between that one and the one in the middle, the one who had watched and waited, and found that the man was even faster than he'd suspected and the Family rankings held him to be.

Fuuta twisted under the tight grip of the man's hand on his arm, wondering whether he would have a chance to correct that oversight in the book's rankings, and aimed a kick at the man's knee. It was supposed to be one of the ideal places to hit an assailant, but either he didn't have enough purchase or the man had a higher pain tolerance than most (what _were_ the rankings on that?) because he did not flinch.

Fuuta was just beginning to worry in earnest when the equation shifted radically.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" The voice was young—female, Fuuta thought—and scared underneath the layer of outrage that had it ringing off the walls of this alley, scared like someone who was acutely aware that the situation was dangerous but had decided to get involved anyway.

It _was_ a girl, in fact, which Fuuta saw when his captor twisted to see who was addressing them. She was short, not all that much taller than Fuuta himself, and looked old enough to be in middle school. She had a bag slung over her shoulder and she stood with her feet planted in a solid stance. "You let him go!"

"Go away, little girl," the leader of the Cocchi's pack of thugs said. "This doesn't concern you."

But oh, it did, Fuuta could have told him, if he had cared to, because the girl wasn't alone. There was a tall boy to her right, dark-haired and not listed anywhere in the libro delle stelle, but there was also a scowling boy with a silver hair at her left hand. _He_ was the Smoking Bomb, ranked ninety-third among the independent hitman and thirteenth among the explosives experts, currently employed by the Vongola. And _that_ meant that the girl was Sawada Tsunako, the very person Fuuta had placed himself in this spot in order to meet. It looked like he was going to be able to see to that task more quickly and in more immediate circumstances than he'd expected.

As Fuuta observed, very nearly wholly diverted from his current situation, the Vongola heir lifted her chin. "I don't care. You can't go around hassling little kids and think that's okay. Let him go."

Interesting, Fuuta thought, that she was going to treat this like a simple case of—bullying, abduction, something like that, rather than as a case of mafia politics in action. Discreet of her, really.

"Run along now, kid, before we have to do something you'll regret," the leader, apparently the chivalrous sort, said. "This doesn't concern you." He nodded to the man who held Fuuta. "Bring him."

Fuuta twisted against the grip on his arm, struggling against it a shade less vigorously than he might have done if he weren't so interested in seeing what Sawada Tsunako would do next. Would she continue to involve herself in this business, or be warned off, or—

"She said to let him go, assholes." The Smoking Bomb stepped forward, fanning a handful of the bombs he was said to favor between his fingers. "Think that means you ought to let him go."

"Yeah, I mean, she has a point." That was the other boy, the one Fuuta didn't have any data for. He stepped forward too, slinging the bag off his shoulder and producing a baseball bat from it. He rested it against his shoulder, smiling all the while. "You go around grabbing little kids off the street and you're going to end up with a nasty reputation, you know?"

That made the leader growl, even as Fuuta watched the boys, taking note of how they were clearly willing to act on implicit orders from the Vongola heir—it made sense, she didn't look particularly strong in her own right, and the Cocchi _did_ know how to choose their foot soldiers for strength, if not smarts. "Fine," the leader said. "But don't say I didn't warn you." He jerked his head. "Come on, Carlo." 

The Smoking Bomb went one way and his cohort went the other, still wearing that cheerful smile. Fuuta elected to watch the latter since they already had data for the Smoking Bomb, but nothing for this one. He seemed to be unconcerned that Carlo stood a full head taller than him and probably outweighed him by twenty kilos, and held his bat in a casual grip. For his part, Carlo (6,231st in strength, 52,333rd in agility, 73,694th in speed) didn't seem to be taking him seriously. He folded his fingers into fists as he lumbered forward and swore a startled if unimaginative oath as the boy evaded his first punch and sent the bat whistling through the air. It sang, actually, not like a bat at all—Fuuta blinked, since metamorphosing weapons were rare and expensive enough that one did not see them in the hands of amateurs.

The boy was clearly an amateur, though a gifted one. He was strong, if not as strong as Carlo, but faster and more agile, enough so that the clear openings in his stance were recuperated by how quickly he recovered, not to mention Carlo's own lack of intelligence and the way his temper mounted with each punch the boy eluded, and when the boy landed a stinging blow. 

Something exploded—the Smoking Bomb at work—and the man holding Fuuta muttered something under his breath. The explosion didn't bother the unknown boy, though Carlo whipped his head around to look. It was a costly mistake on his part; the boy was good enough to press the opening, bringing his sword around to knock against the backs of Carlo's knees. That was when the man holding Fuuta swore again and scooped him up. Fuuta protested as the man slung him over a shoulder and took off running, more annoyed that he was missing the rest of the fight than with the fact that he was being abducted at first. He hammered a fist against the man's back. "Put me down!"

His captor didn't bother answering. He just ran, his every stride jouncing Fuuta against his shoulder. The upside-down view of the world around them and the blood rushing to his head began to make him feel alarmingly nauseated. Maybe that was something that could be useful, he thought dizzily. The man would surely stop to do _something_ if he were vomited on, and that would be a good chance to escape.

Before he could deploy any sort of tactical regurgitation, his captor skidded to a stop. "You've got to be kidding," he rumbled while Fuuta fought against the way the world was spinning and his captor's back blocked his ability to see what was going on.

"Let him go." Sawada Tsunako again, her voice not quite steady. 

"You gonna make me? All by yourself?" His captor scoffed. "Don't be stupid."

"If I have to," she said, sounding young and scared and very determined for all that.

Fuuta tried to focus on what that might mean about this Vongola heir, though his dizziness and nausea didn't make that as easy as it might have been. Before he could make anything of it, his captor sighed. "If you're gonna make it like that…" The world spun again as he slung Fuuta down from his shoulder, then exploded in pain as he slammed a fist against Fuuta's face. "You stay put," he commanded as Fuuta reeled and staggered, stars exploding across his vision and Sawada's indignant shout echoing in his ears. There was a wall—he bounced off it—there was the ground beneath his hands, and there was his gorge in his throat as he threw up, jaw aching and his pulse pounding in his ears as he heaved.

None of that was important. Fuuta forced himself to raise his eyes from the ground and focused them on the curiously doubled figures of Sawada and his captor. They were circling each other in this little culvert. His rankings—Fuuta groped for the man's rankings, but they hung tantalizingly out of reach now—they had to be better than this girl's, this girl who was thirteen years old and slightly built, pale-faced with her fright (or was that anger? He couldn't tell). She was outmatched in every way, but she was still going to try—

The man lunged for her, faster than a man his size ought to have been, and she yelped when he seized her—no, she called out for something, _someone_ —"Reborn!"

At first Fuuta thought that it must have been a ploy, however clever, because of course the Vongola heir would have another bodyguard, of _course_ she wouldn't need to fight directly, and he felt a distant sort of pity to know that the Cocchi man would be meeting his fate at the hands of the strongest of the Arcobaleno—what could the de la Stella learn from that? The man didn't even seem to realize how doomed he was, preoccupied as he was with the girl struggling in his hands.

The cracking sound of the gunshot wasn't unexpected, but its effects were. As Fuuta bit down on his nausea and blurred vision, he saw the girl go limp. For a fraction of a second, he wondered whether Reborn had somehow missed his shot (surely an impossibility from one of the top-ranked shots in the mafia). Then Sawada caught fire and Fuuta forgot about the sick churning in his gut and the ache of his head as he watched the ensuing action. It was one of the special bullets, it had to have been, and Sawada tore into the man without restraint. She battered at his face and got a good jab of her elbow against his throat. When he choked and gurgled, she managed to sink a knee into his gut. 

He staggered backwards and she pushed her advantage, hammering at him with her fists until he went down, all his strength and agility from before muddled by his apparent disorientation—Fuuta supposed it was understandable, since Sawada had looked very, _very_ ordinary before she'd manifested the Sky Flame and a complete absence of any sense of proportion.

Perhaps that was why it was over so quickly. The man groaned feebly where he was sprawled across the pavement and Sawada stood over him, her thin shoulders heaving and her eyes wild, before the Flame on her brow and in her hands whispered away. It was like the close of a spell; Fuuta's nausea returned in full force, along with her awareness that her clothes had—

Some of the special bullets had very strange effects, he thought, retching again.

A hand settled on his shoulder, very light. "Are you all right?"

Fuuta took stock of himself and decided that he would probably survive. He raised his eyes and saw that it was Sawada crouched next to him, her clothes restored to an untidy facsimile of their previous order. She was peering at him, anxious. "I think so," he said, much more interested in her than his aching head or rebellious stomach.

"Your _head_ ," she said, looking angry. She touched the side of his face, her fingers light, but even that hurt. She must have seen that, because she immediately apologized. "Sorry! You need to see a doctor—can we call your parents? Where are they? Somewhere nearby?"

Where were his _parents_? Fuuta blinked at Sawada, disoriented by the question. "They're not here," he said, to see how she would take that.

"Of course they're not," she sighed. "They'll just have to meet us at the hospital, I guess." She smiled at him. "My name's Tsunako. What's yours?"

"Fuuta," he said, more confused now. "Fuuta de la Stella," he added, just to see if that changed anything.

Her expression didn't even flicker. "Fuuta-kun," she said. "It's nice to meet you. Do you think you can stand up?"

Probably he could—his head still ached, but the dizziness and the wavering feeling in his stomach were ebbing away now that he'd had the chance to be still for a few minutes. "Why did you help me?" he asked instead.

Sawada looked distinctly embarrassed. "Oh, uh. You looked like you needed it," she said, cheeks glowing pink. "Those guys…" Something dark moved in her eyes. "I didn't think they could be up to anything good, bothering a little kid like that."

That didn't make any _sense_ , even though Fuuta was sure that she was telling him the truth as she saw it. "You don't know who I am?"

It was her turn to blink. "Should I?"

Fuuta was still trying to make some kind of sense of that when Sawada's two bodyguards came pounding around the corner, the one grinning and the other full of apologies and recriminations that Sawada had gone chasing after Fuuta and his captor without them. Fuuta's confusion over Sawada's baffling behavior was swallowed up in the flurry of conversation—"You can't go running off like that!" and "But I had to, he had Fuuta-kun, and I couldn't let him get away" and "Hahah, looks like you really did a number on this guy, huh?"

Fuuta's silence went unnoticed in that welter of conversation, even as she was chivvying them along. To the hospital, Fuuta guessed, listening and watching as the boys reported the outcomes of their own fights. The boy was Yamamoto, which niggled at something in the back of Fuuta's mind, something to check later, once he'd had a chance to consult the book. Both Yamamoto and the Smoking Bomb had beaten their opponents, which was less surprising where the Smoking Bomb was concerned than it was with Yamamoto. But Sawada didn't seem at all surprised by their reports. 

"Anyway," the Smoking Bomb said, finally, all business-like, "what I want to know is who those guys were and what they wanted with the kid." He was studying Fuuta, his eyes narrow and suspicious, and hadn't looked at all happy about the way Sawada was having him walk right next to her, his hand tucked in hers.

"They were from the Cocchi," Fuuta said. "I think they were going to try to hold me for ransom."

The Smoking Bomb looked even _more_ suspicious at that, but it was Sawada's reaction that was interesting. Her face went pale and her hand wrapped around his turned cold.

Yamamoto made an interested sound. "Why would they do that?"

"He's a de la Stella." This was a new voice—new to Fuuta, anyway, though the three of them didn't seem at all surprised by the interruption. Fuuta got his first look at Reborn when the Arcobaleno dropped down from a wall above them and took up residence on Yamamoto's shoulder. "That's why."

The Smoking Bomb choked and Yamamoto looked confused, but it was Tsunako who looked down at Fuuta, her eyes wide, and said, sounding surprised, "Are you from the mafia, too?"

Near-abduction and possible concussion notwithstanding, Fuuta decided that he was glad to have taken this assignment. He smiled up at her. "I guess I am," he said, feeling very cheerful indeed, because it had been a long, long time since anyone had written anything new in the libre delle stelle—but he could see that this was about to change.

 

No nine-year-old should be as composed as Fuuta, Bianchi thought, and did her best not to let on how disconcerting the boy was. Even with a purple bruise discoloring one cheek and two hitman sitting across the table from him, he looked absolutely calm. He wrapped his hands around his glass of water and looked at them with polite interest. "So?"

Reborn remained silent—grimly so, though the difference between this and his other silences was a fine-grained one—which left it to Bianchi to ask, "Why are you here?"

Blunt and inelegant, she knew, but sometimes it was better to take the brute force approach. 

Fuuta turned his gaze on her, weighing something against what she had said, and smiled. "We need to rank the new Vongola heir." He shrugged, a peculiarly adult gesture for such a young boy to make. "It's what we do."

"Part of what you do," Bianchi said, which was true enough. The de la Stella dealt in information bought, sold, traded, and bartered, and did very well by it.

The way Fuuta's lips quirked hinted at laughter. "A Family must live, Poison Scorpion."

"Yes. A Family must live." Reborn spoke nearly without inflection and stared at Fuuta with unblinking concentration. "The Vongola must live. What will your terms be?"

Either Fuuta was too young to play games at the negotiating table, or he was quick enough to see that games would not endear him to the Vongola just then. His gaze went unfocused for a moment, then cleared again. "The Vongola already knows the price of our silence." He stopped there, looking as though he might say more, and so Reborn said nothing to that. Fuuta looked down, frowning at his glass of water and tapping his fingernail against the side of it a precise three times before looking up again. "Did she really have no idea who I was?"

"She wouldn't have recognized you on sight," Bianchi told him. "And I haven't tried to explain the de la Stella to her yet. I assume she saw someone apparently in need of assistance and offered it."

Fuuta gazed at her, probably sifting her words for the truth, and didn't say anything to that, not right away. There was no sense in pushing, not with one of the de la Stella, who were undeniably strange even in a world filled with strange things. Fuuta thought and they waited, until his eyes cleared and focused on the present moment. "I wonder," he said, almost casual about it. "Do the Vongola realize how closely she resembles Vongola Primo?"

"That resemblance has been noted," Reborn said, perfectly even, while Bianchi worked to school her expression.

Fuuta smiled then, open as a child—as the child he ought to have been. "I thought so." He uncurled his hands from his glass and spread them against the table. "We did not come across Giotto Vongola until he was grown, until after he'd already flowered into his full strength. We have always considered that a great pity."

Reborn didn't say anything. Bianchi followed his lead, conscious that she'd become no more than a witness for the bargain being made between the Vongola and the de la Stella. At last Fuuta spoke again. "Any ranking I make now will be incomplete," he said. "I know it will be. We will have to come back, again and again, simply to keep up."

Reborn didn't react at all, but somehow his attitude shifted to one of silent, chilly anger. "Your presence here has already brought the Cocchi to the area."

Fuuta nodded. "Yes, I know. Comings and goings would only increase the notice the other Families take. I propose that I stay instead, so that I may monitor her rankings as she grows into her potential."

Reborn gave Fuuta a hard look. "I'm sure the de la Stella would find that advantageous. Why should the Vongola agree?" 

"An exchange," Fuuta offered, quiet. "Omertà, until she reaches her potential. Or until she rejoins the world, whichever comes first."

Bianchi hissed without quite meaning to, between her teeth, at that offer of absolute secrecy. "Until she rejoins the world," Reborn countered. "No sooner than that, the Vongola insists. And we will renegotiate the Vongola's secrets then."

Fuuta's gaze went unfocused again. His lips moved faintly as he calculated. Then he nodded. "The de la Stella finds this acceptable."

Reborn's nod was clipped. "Done," he said. "You will be Tsunako's cousin several times removed, come to live with her family for a while." He paused. "The Cocchi's people have been dealt with. See that there are no more of them."

"We will see to it," Fuuta said, which Bianchi sincerely hoped he would. Dealing with three unexpected bodies had thoroughly derailed her plans for the evening. Fuuta smiled at them both, clearly pleased by the bargain they'd struck. "Thank you. The de la Stella are looking forward to this opportunity." He rose and dipped a little bow to them and went out, calling for Tsunako-neesan and Nana-baasan.

Bianchi exhaled and looked at Reborn, who was very close to frowning outright. "Because things weren't already complicated enough, right?"

He didn't answer right away. When he did, all he said was, "She'll have to start dealing with the other Families at some point. The de la Stella aren't the starting point I'd meant to use, but I suppose they'll do." He clicked his tongue against his teeth and clearly dismissed his original plans. One had to be prepared to improvise, or so he always said, and at least Reborn followed his own rules. "You had no problems with the disposal?"

"None," Bianchi said, not that she would have admitted otherwise. "They're on a slow boat south. When they're found, it'll look like one of the syndicates took exception to their presence." Which reminded her. "You owe me some walking-around money. Rush jobs are expensive."

He sniffed. "There's no reason for them to be."

"I beg to differ," Bianchi said, holding out her hand. "Cough up, Reborn."

"You know," he mused as he drew his wallet form his pocket and began extracting bills from it, "I had thought that the days of being nagged for money were behind me. I do wish I'd been mistaken."

"Keep talking like that and I'm going to add the asshole surcharge," Bianchi told him. He snorted, a glint of amusement lurking in the crinkle of his eyes, and laid down one more bill before pushing the stack her way. "Lovely." She pocketed the money and glanced at the time. "Lesson time," she said, rising.

"Indeed." Reborn got up as well. "I think I must make some phone calls."

Bianchi nodded her comprehension and went upstairs to find Tsunako to brief her on the de la Stella, glad that she wasn't the one who was going to have to explain things to the Ninth.


End file.
